Proverbs 5:13 · World English Bible
Proverbs 5:13 Meaning Neither Have I Obeyed the Voice
neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor turned my ear to those who instructed me!
What does Proverbs 5:13 mean?
The voice that would have led a mind out of fear was speaking the whole time; the sorrow is only in the not listening. Every messenger of love, every gentle prompting toward forgiveness, was set aside in favour of the louder teacher who promised safety in separation.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 5:13 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
The voice that would have led a mind out of fear was speaking the whole time; the sorrow is only in the not listening. Every messenger of love, every gentle prompting toward forgiveness, was set aside in favour of the louder teacher who promised safety in separation. To incline the ear is a small motion of willingness, and it was that small motion, not any grand act, that was withheld.
The voice has not stopped. A mind that turns to listen now finds it exactly where it always was.
Teachers: the many forms love's one voice takes to reach a mind, each offering the same way back. The ear: the mind's willingness to hear, the slight turning toward love that changes everything.
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Live Proverbs 5:13 today
- Put your phone face down for ten minutes with nothing playing and no podcast in your ears. You are not trying to achieve anything, just making room for the quieter thought you keep drowning out.
- When a friend or family member tells you something you have already decided you know, listen as if you had never heard it. Most of us have someone whose advice we stopped taking years ago for no good reason.
- Before you send the sharp reply, the one your thumbs already wrote, pause for one breath and ask what the kinder part of you would say instead. That small turn is the whole thing. Then send that one.
Whose voice have I been tuning out, and what might it have been trying to give me?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 56
Those who know do not need to talk, and the one who talks loudest knows least. The quieter voice is usually the one worth following.
Zen
The bell has been ringing all along. The question is never whether it sounds, only whether you stopped to hear it.
Sufism · Rumi
He said there is a voice that does not use words, and told the listener to stop talking long enough to hear it. The turning of the ear is the whole work.
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