Apply your heart to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge.
Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
If you strike him with the rod,
you will save his soul from Sheol.
My son, if your heart is wise,
my heart too will be glad.
My inmost being will exult
when your lips speak what is right.Proverbs 23:12-16
These verses remind us of much that was said in the opening nine chapters of the book (cf particularly 2:1-9). The note in 12 is characteristic: wisdom and instruction do not come by chance, nor fitfully either, but only when worked at with all diligence. It engages the mind, and, alas, this is something that many are unwilling to learn or understand. 'Heart' in the O.T, particularly emphasises the mind and the understanding (cf Ephesians 5:17). The training of children is particularly in view in 13ff (see Notes on 22:6, 'Train up a child....'). Children will survive correction and discipline, and indeed will survive in the best sense by means of it. But if, as Kidner points out, a parent's firmness is vital, so is the child's own choice (15,16) - therefore the parent's training must be persuasive; and where there is love and care and compassion (15b, 16a), this will surely be accomplished, even when he is administering correction. As to the spiritualising of these words, Ironside comments thus on 15 and 16: 'We may hear, in these words of a father addressed to his son, the desire of our Father, God, that His children walk in the truth. It is precious indeed to be thus afforded the holy privilege of giving joy to His heart by loving wisdom and speaking right things. See 3 John 3, 4. It is surely not difficult to hear the voice of God speaking to all His children in the words this earthly father in Proverbs speaks to his son; nor should we be slow or unwilling to listen to His voice in what they say to us.