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Proverbs 22:17 · World English Bible

Proverbs 22:17 Meaning Turn Your Ear

Turn your ear, and listen to the words of the wise. Apply your heart to my teaching.

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What does Proverbs 22:17 mean?

To bend the ear is to quiet the ego long enough for another Voice to be heard. The mind is always listening to one of two teachers, and the noise of fear is loud precisely so that the still teaching of love will be drowned.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 22:17 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

To bend the ear is to quiet the ego long enough for another Voice to be heard. The mind is always listening to one of two teachers, and the noise of fear is loud precisely so that the still teaching of love will be drowned. Here a mind is asked to lower its own clamor and turn inward, where the words that heal are spoken softly and only reach a mind willing to grow quiet.

Applying the heart is not the gathering of facts but the choice of which teacher to trust. What is learned this way does not add to a mind; it corrects it, replacing the anxious counsel it gave itself with the calm certainty that was always waiting underneath the din.

Ear: the mind's willingness to receive, the faculty that must be turned from fear toward the quiet Voice of love Heart: the deep center where the mind decides which teacher to obey, the seat of the choice between fear and love

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 22:17 today

  1. Give yourself three minutes in the car before you go inside, no radio, no phone, nothing to decide. Just let the inside of your head get quiet enough to hear itself.
  2. In your next real conversation, listen all the way to the end without building your reply underneath their words. You will hear something you would otherwise have missed.
  3. When advice comes from someone you are tempted to dismiss, hold your objection for one full minute before you raise it. See whether anything true gets through in that minute.

Which voice have you been listening to all day, and did you choose it?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 16

Become still and things show themselves. The water has to stop moving before anything can be seen in it.

Sufism · Rumi

There is a voice that speaks without words. Stop your own talking long enough and you will find it has been waiting.

Zen · Shunryu Suzuki

A beginner's mind is open, so it can receive. A mind already full of its own answers has no room for a true one.

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

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