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Proverbs 20:12 · World English Bible

Proverbs 20:12 Meaning The Hearing Ear

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, Yahweh has made even both of them.

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What does Proverbs 20:12 mean?

The power to hear and the power to see were given by love, which means perception itself is meant to serve truth and not the ego. Fear borrows these faculties and teaches them to listen for threat and to look for enemies, but that was never their purpose.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 20:12 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The power to hear and the power to see were given by love, which means perception itself is meant to serve truth and not the ego. Fear borrows these faculties and teaches them to listen for threat and to look for enemies, but that was never their purpose. When the mind returns them to their Source, the same ear that strained for attack begins to hear only a call for love, and the same eye that hunted for guilt begins to see innocence everywhere.

Sight and hearing are not the problem; the teacher behind them is, and a mind that hands them back to love finds it was always able to perceive a world it need not fear.

Hearing ear: the mind's power to listen, made by love and free to hear either a threat or a call for love Seeing eye: the mind's power to look, given by love and able to perceive either guilt or innocence depending on its teacher

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 20:12 today

  1. Walk somewhere familiar today with your phone in your pocket and let your eyes actually land on things. The street you stopped seeing is still there.
  2. In one conversation, listen for what the person actually needs instead of what you plan to say back. Half of what sounds like an attack is someone asking to be cared about.
  3. When someone's tone sets you off, assume for ten seconds that they are having a hard day and not coming for you. Then answer the person you decided to see.

If I could see the people around me as they really are today, what would change?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

When you listen with your whole self and nothing else, the sound and the hearing become one thing. Attention is the practice.

Sufism · Rumi

There is a way of seeing with the heart that turns the same world into something worth loving. Nothing changed but the eyes.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

Take away your opinion about what you see, and you take away the complaint. The picture was never the problem.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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