Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge.
Here is, 1. A parent instructing his child. He is here brought in persuading him to give his mind to his book, and especially to the scriptures and his catechism, to attend to the words of knowledge, by which he might come to know his duty, and danger, and interest, and not to think it enough to give them the hearing, but to apply his...
Commenting on Proverbs 23:12-16
Apply thine heart unto instruction,.... To the instruction of parents, and to the instruction of ministers of the word; to the Scriptures, which are profitable to instruction in righteousness; to the instruction of wisdom, or to the Gospel of Christ, which instructs in things relating to him, and to salvation by him: or, "bring in thine heart to instruction" (y); not only bring thy body...
Pro 23:12 The following proverb warrants us to pause here, for it opens up, as a compendious echo of Pro 22:17-21, a new series of proverbs of wisdom: 12 Apply thine heart to instruction, And thine ear to the utterances of knowledge. We may, according as we accent in למּוּסר the divine origin or the human medium, translate, offer disciplinae (Schultens), or adhibe ad disciplinam cor tuum (Fleischer).