Proverbs 4:21

These verses are the father’s closing charge in Proverbs 4, part of the long run of a father’s appeals to his son that fills Proverbs 1–9. The chapter opens with “Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father” (Proverbs 4:1), and the father tells how his own father once taught him (Proverbs 4:4), so the wisdom comes down the generations as an inheritance. Just before this charge he sets the path of the just, which “shineth more and more unto the perfect day”, against the way of the wicked, which is as darkness (Proverbs 4:18–19). Now he tells his son how to stay on the first path.

“My son” is the address that runs all through these chapters (Proverbs 1:8). The word bên simply means son, and it makes the appeal warm and personal as well as authoritative. In Israel the family, and the father above all, was the first school of wisdom and godly conduct, and teaching was given by word of mouth, to be remembered and thought over. Because this wisdom comes from God, we hear in the father’s voice the care of our heavenly Father, whose instruction is given for our good.

The first command, “attend to my words”, uses qâshab, to listen attentively or pay attention, literally to prick up the ears, and one lexicon adds the sense to obey. The second, “incline thine ear”, joins nâṭâh, to stretch out or bend, with ʼôzen, the ear. The son is to lean in toward the speaker so that he catches every word, which pictures a humble and eager readiness to be taught. The two halves of the verse say the same thing twice, in the usual way of Hebrew poetry, and the doubling presses the point home. “Words” is dâbâr, which means word or speech and can also mean a matter or thing, and “sayings” is ʼêmer, what is spoken. Between them they take in everything the father teaches. Wisdom asks for the same leaning ear earlier in the book: “incline thine ear unto wisdom” (Proverbs 2:2).

The call to hear runs through all of Scripture. Israel was told, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD”, and was called to love him with all the heart (Deuteronomy 6:4–5). Hearing in the Bible leads to doing. James tells us to be “doers of the word”, since the one who only hears deceives himself (James 1:22), and Jesus likens the one who hears his sayings and does them to a wise man who built his house upon a rock (Matthew 7:24).

“Them” in verse 21 points back to the words and sayings of verse 20, and the father wants them kept in two places. “Let them not depart from thine eyes” uses lûwz, to turn aside or slip away. The son is to keep the teaching always in view and guard against the slow drift of distraction and forgetfulness. The eyes, ʻayin, stand in Hebrew for sight and also for perception, the way a person sees and understands the world.

“Keep them in the midst of thine heart” uses shâmar, a verb whose root idea is to hedge about, as with thorns, and so to guard, protect and carefully observe, the way a watchman guards a city or a shepherd his flock. The heart, lêbâb, is the inner person, the seat of thought, will, feeling, conscience and character, and “the midst” of it is its very center. Words kept there become part of who the son is and shape what he wants and what he chooses. Eyes and heart together take in the whole person, from how he sees the world outside to what rules him within.

Moses gave Israel the same charge. The LORD’s words were to be in their hearts, taught to their children, talked of at home and on the road, and bound “as frontlets between thine eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:6–9). The psalmist prays, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11), and God promised a new covenant in which he would write his law in his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). For us these words are above all the words of Scripture, read, studied, learned by heart and prayed over until they become our own.

Verse 22 gives the reason for all this care: “For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” Life, chay, here means life in its fullness, the flourishing that comes with God’s blessing. Earlier in the book wisdom is “a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her” (Proverbs 3:18), and Moses told Israel that God’s word “is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47).

To find, mâtsâʼ, means to find or attain. In Proverbs finding follows seeking, as wisdom says, “those that seek me early shall find me” (Proverbs 8:17), and this chapter has already said, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:7). The life is promised to those who search for these words and take them to heart.

Health, marpêʼ, comes from the root for healing and means a cure or remedy, and so healing and soundness. “All their flesh” (bâsâr) is the whole body. Israel drew no hard line between the spiritual and the physical, and a person’s walk with God touched every part of him. Proverbs makes the same promise elsewhere: fear the LORD and depart from evil, “It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones” (Proverbs 3:7–8). The law tied blessing to faithfulness in the same way (Deuteronomy 28:1–14). God’s words feed us as truly as bread does, for “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), and Jesus said, “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Living by God’s wisdom leads to wiser choices, a steadier mind and sharper discernment, and the soundness it brings reaches the body too.

Verse 23 is the center of the passage. Verses 20 to 22 bring the father’s words in through the ear and the eye and store them in the heart, and verses 24 to 27 show the guarded heart at work in the mouth, the eyes and the feet. Earlier in the chapter the father set out the benefits of wisdom (Proverbs 4:10–13), and the book has already warned of the two paths, wisdom’s way and the crooked ways of the wicked (Proverbs 2:12–19). Here he names the one place where the choice between them is made.

The heart, lêb, a form of the lêbâb of verse 21, is the core of the person: mind, will, feelings, conscience and moral character together. It is where wisdom enters (Proverbs 2:10), and it is the control center from which thoughts, intentions, decisions and deeds come.

“Keep” is nâtsar, to guard. It can mean to protect or maintain something, or to obey, and in a bad sense to conceal. Here it pictures a sentry guarding a fortress or an owner watching over a treasure. “With all diligence” is mikkol mishmâr in Hebrew, and mishmâr comes from shâmar, the “keep” of verse 21. It is the word for a guard, whether the person on watch, the post he holds or a prison, and it can also mean something given into keeping. The phrase reads literally “above all guarding”, which puts the heart first among everything a person watches over and asks for every kind of watchfulness in keeping it.

The reason follows: “for out of it are the issues of life.” “Issues” is tôwtsâʼâh, from the verb to go out. It means exits or outgoings, and it is used of borders, of deliverance and of a source. The issues of life are everything that flows out from a person, such as his words, deeds, attitudes, relationships and choices, and with them the course his whole life takes. All of it rises from the heart the way streams rise from a spring.

Jesus taught the same truth. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:19). “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good” (Luke 6:45), and “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). God looks first at the heart, so real change in a life begins there.

The last four verses go outward through the body, from the mouth to the eyes to the feet, and show what a kept heart looks like in daily life.

Every line of this passage leads to Jesus Christ. He is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1) and who was made flesh (John 1:14). The father’s “attend to my words” becomes the Father’s own word on the mount of transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5). His teaching, above all in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), is the word we lean in to hear.

Keeping the words before our eyes now means “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), and keeping them in the heart means that Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Ephesians 3:17) and his words abide in us (John 15:7). To find wisdom is to find him, for “in him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4), and he came “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). By his stripes we were healed (1 Peter 2:24), and he calls all who labour to come to him for rest, for his yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:28–30).

Christ also walked this passage out perfectly. His meat was to do the will of the one who sent him (John 4:34, John 6:38). When the time came he “stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), knowing all that awaited him there (Luke 18:31–33), and his eye was single (Matthew 6:22), fixed on his Father’s glory and our salvation. He turned to neither hand when he was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1) or when he prayed in Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42), and he was tempted in all points as we are, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

He is the way itself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He has opened for us “a new and living way” by his blood (Hebrews 10:19–20), and he is the rock on which a life stands firm through every storm (Matthew 7:24–25). His Spirit guides us into all truth (John 16:13), so we walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), “even as he walked” (1 John 2:6), on the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:14), toward “the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). He has already triumphed over every power arrayed against us through his cross (Colossians 2:15).

The order of these verses is a pattern for an ordinary day. It starts with listening, as we open God’s word and lean in to hear it, setting other voices aside for a while. What we hear we keep, before our eyes in reading and in our hearts by thinking it over, memorizing it and praying it back to God. That word is life to us and health to the whole of us.

Because everything flows from the heart, it pays to notice what we let into it, through what we watch and read, the conversations we join and the company we keep. Our words show us what the heart holds, so a careless or crooked word is a call to bring the heart back to God and confess it. Where a choice lies ahead, we can weigh it with prayer, Scripture and wise counsel and trust the LORD to make the path firm. And when evil lies along the road, the wise step is to draw the foot back. In all of it we have the help of the God who gives new hearts and keeps them in his peace.