Proverbs 15

1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

When you talk to others, the tone of your voice matters. For this reason, you must train yourself to speak in a very gentle tone.

When you need to get something from someone, your chances of success diminish when the person is angry. Therefore, in any conversation, you really don’t want to stir up anger. If the person is already angry, the gentleness of your tone will calm that person’s anger.

Speaking in a gentle tone is a skillset that you must master.

2 The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly.

When you want to convince someone of something, you have to put it in a way that is acceptable to them. If you simply give them information, and don’t connect it to something that they will find palatable, you are like a fool who is spouting folly.

3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.

As you go through life, you must realize one important thing – that nothing escapes God. What you do, why you do it, and what you think – all these things are plainly evident to God. Don’t, for even a moment, ever think that you can hurt someone and get away with it.

4 A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but perversion in it crushes the spirit.

A soothing tongue is one that speaks words that calm people down. It is a very useful tool to have.

To calm someone down, you have to know them well. You have to know what angers them and what calms them, and you have to steer the conversation to that which calms them.

5 A fool rejects his father's discipline, but he who regards reproof is sensible.

When you are young, God gives your father the responsibility of disciplining you i.e. getting you to stay on the right track. Your father disciplines you so that his house, of which you are a part, functions smoothly. It is in his best interest that you stay on the right track. But he also cares for you, and wants things to go well with you. Therefore, it makes sense for you to accept his discipline instead of listening to the thoughts of your own mind.

Don’t give your father a hard time. Learn from him for as long as you can.

Not all fathers are good. Not all fathers have the best of their children in mind. When you are young, it is not easy for you to discern whether you father’s discipline comes with your best in mind. If you doubt your father’s discipline, take the matter up with God and ask Him to help you figure things out.

6 Great wealth is in the house of the righteous, but trouble is in the income of the wicked.

If you are a righteous person, your righteousness will be very valuable. On the flip side, if your income came from unscrupulous means, it will result in trouble.

7 The lips of the wise spread knowledge, but the hearts of fools are not so.

If you know something useful, it is wise for you to spread that knowledge to those who value it. By teaching them, you will earn their respect, and they will be available to help you in your time of need.

A foolish person doesn’t acquire useful knowledge. He is content with acquiring useless knowledge.

8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.

Just because you do something for God, God is not going to do something for you. God does things for those who He is fond of. If you deal badly with His creation (people, animals, things), He will not be fond of you. Treat His creation well and He will be delighted to listen to your request.

If you pray and don’t receive, examine yourself and see if you have done something to upset God.

9 The way of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but He loves one who pursues righteousness.

If you want God to be fond of you, do things that He likes. God doesn’t like everyone; He likes whose who practice what is right in His eyes.

10 Grievous punishment is for him who forsakes the way; he who hates reproof will die.

If you do something wrong, and someone corrects you, if you try to defend yourself or get upset with the person who is pointing you your fault, you will end up on wrong paths, and you will suffer for it.

For example, suppose your friends are trying to convince you to try smoking. You mother catches you smoking, and reproves you. Your mind tells you to ignore her, and resist her advice to stop smoking. So you continue smoking. What is the result a few years later? You are addicted. You try to stop but you can’t. You spend money on a useless habit. Your health is affected. You are in the phase where you are receiving grievous punishment for hating your mother’s reproof. Why did this happen? Only because you forsook the way and hated reproof.

Smoking is just an example. There are so many other things that put you in the same situation.

11 Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD, how much more the hearts of men!

Do you know where Sheol and Abaddon are? Do you know how to get in there? Do you know what goes on there?

Neither do I.

But God knows all these things.

If God knows all these things, don’t you think God knows what is in your heart? Realize that your thoughts, motives and actions are all known to God. It is pointless to operate under the assumption that God doesn’t know what you do and why you do it. You may be able to fool men, but you cannot fool God.

For this reason, don’t even try to fool God. When you sin, acknowledge it instead of trying to find excuses for it. Don’t blame anyone else for your behavior. Be honest with God.

12 A scoffer does not love one who reproves him, he will not go to the wise.

What kind of attitude do you have to those who reprove you? When your parents or spouse or children or boss or co-worker point out your shortcomings, how do you react?

If you are unwilling to let others comment on your life, you will progress less.

Even if their motive is evil you can give thought to what they say. Sometimes, the most useful people are those who reprove us with evil motives. They help us rise to perfection more than anyone else. We can consider what they say, and fix our imperfections, but we don’t necessarily have to acknowledge our faults to them. On the other hand, sometimes, acknowledging our faults to them and thanking them for pointing it out disarms them better than anything else.

13 A joyful heart makes a cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.

Just as your physical heart pushes life giving oxygenated blood to all the other parts of your body, your spiritual heart is the part of you that is central to your mind and spirit, and affects your mind and your spirit.

If your spiritual heart is sad, you can’t think clearly, and solve your life problems as they come up. Further, you can become spiritually weak, and unable to overcome even the weaker temptations. You can get moody and depressed, and worse.

For this reason, you have to guard your spiritual heart. You have to understand what makes it sad and you have to protect yourself from it.

One thing that makes people sad is being rejected in love. When you give your heart to someone else, and they don’t treat you well, you can be greatly affected. So then, be careful about giving your heart away to any human being. If God wants you to love Him with all your heart, then clearly there is not room there to love anyone else, is there?

14 The mind of the intelligent seeks knowledge, but the mouth of fools feeds on folly.

When you open your mouth and speak on a topic, do you do it haphazardly, or after doing some research?

An intelligent person speaks on a topic only after researching it and thinking about it. But a foolish person is so desperate to appear smart that he will just offer his opinion on anything anyone brings up without having first giving thought to what he is about to say. As a result, he says something foolish, and then, when his folly is exposed by a sharp mind, he tries to defend an untenable position, thus making an even greater fool of himself.

Be wise, and speak only about what you know. On what you don’t know, ask questions and learn, and then speak.

15 All the days of the afflicted are bad, but a cheerful heart has a continual feast.

The outcome of guarding your heart is that you are cheerful all day, every day. However, if you allow your guard down, and let your heart be taken (i.e. if you are afflicted), you will have a bad day, every day, until that problem is fixed.

16 Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and turmoil with it.

If you have a weighing scale, and on one side put the fear of the Lord, and on the other side, all the treasure of the world, from an eternal perspective, which is more valuable?

The fear of the Lord – that is, the desire to please God and look good in His eyes – is more valuable than all treasure. Why? Because, at any time, God can give you as much treasure as He wants to.

So then, learn to keep your priorities right. If you make God unhappy with you just because you want a little more money or a little more pleasure, you’re losing a lot more than you think.

17 Better is a dish of vegetables where love is than a fattened ox served with hatred.

What’s more important: good food, or good relationships?

Good relationships. When people are in synch, and care for each other, you can have a great time, even if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. So then, learn to love others and receive love from others. Be better at loving than at making money, because at the end of the day, it is better to enjoy simple food with those you love and who love you, than to endure excellent food with those who hate you.

18 A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger calms a dispute.

When two people do not wish the very best for each other, the situation is less than ideal. However, when two people have something against each other, the situation is volatile. All it takes is for a hot-tempered man to make a juicy comment, and all that strife comes right up to the surface, and very quickly.

For this reason, we must be extra careful when we are in the midst of those who are at odds with each other. We must not allow anything they say to us to ruffle our feathers. Instead, we should steer the conversation into calmer waters by changing the topic.

19 The way of the lazy is as a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.

A lazy person would rather take shortcuts to get the job done than do it properly even it is the long way. However, when you take shortcuts you run the risk of ending up in difficulty, and the end result is that either the job is undone or done shabbily (resulting in more work later) or the job takes longer than it would have taken if you had stuck to the proper way from the beginning.

So then, if you want to find a better way to do things, do it because of a nobler motive of being excellent, and not because you are too lazy to do the entire set of steps in the way that they should be done.

20 A wise son makes a father glad, but a foolish man despises his mother.

When you excel in life, you are happy, and your family is happy. But your parents are the happiest because they are always rooting for you (I know there are exceptions, but I’m talking in general here).

If you have children, teach them wisdom, and when they are older they will be a source of great joy to you.

As your mother gets older, she may become irrational and demanding and sensitive. It may require extra patience to be in her presence. You can no longer evaluate her the way you evaluate yourself and the rest of the world; instead, you have to cut her a lot of extra slack. You have to overlook her hurtful actions and her words, and forgive all her sin. You have to love her the way the way God loves you. Don’t make the mistake of despising her or holding her to your standard.

21 Folly is joy to him who lacks sense, but a man of understanding walks straight.

Only a foolish man is happy when engaged in folly. If you like doing what is foolish and wrong, you have to seriously fix yourself. You should be horrified at yourself.

If you understand the horror of folly, you will want to do what is good and right.

22 Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.

For your plan to succeed, you have to know things. For example, if you want to fix a leak in your water pipe, you have to know how to fix leaks. If you don’t know how, you need to learn how from people who do know how. If you think it is beneath yourself to learn from others, then you will only be able to solve few problems, but if you are a sponge for learning then you will be able to solve all sorts of problems and become a very useful person.

23 A man has joy in an apt answer, and how delightful is a timely word!

When you get the hang of saying the right thing at the right time you have acquired a very useful skill. Just as an athlete perfects his craft, you need to spend time studying how to say the right thing at the right time.

24 The path of life leads upward for the wise that he may keep away from Sheol below.

Learning to say the right thing at the right time is just one aspect of the path of life. In general, you need to improve in all areas of life. As you do so, it will become harder for Satan to pull you down into Sheol (the place where the unbelieving dead are).

25 The LORD will tear down the house of the proud, but He will establish the boundary of the widow.

When you sense that your house is being torn down, you need to realize what is happening. What is happening is that the Lord is tearing it down. He may use men or circumstances, but you must understand that it is the Lord who is behind it. He is the one who tears down, and He does it when a person is proud.

So then, when everything around you is messing you up, stop and find out where you have been proud, and then repent and humble yourself so that the Lord relents and stops the angel of destruction who is making your life miserable.

A widow is a picture of a humbled and helpless person. God protects such people. If you are in a helpless state, know that God is there to protect you.

26 Evil plans are an abomination to the LORD, but pleasant words are pure.

What do you do when you are upset with someone? Do you plot revenge? Do you say, “He was mean to me just now. Just wait till he needs something from me, and then I’ll be mean to him.” That is an example of an evil plan.

Did you know that doing such things is an abomination to the Lord? An abomination is a ten on a scale from one to ten of evil, with ten being the worst.

Instead, when someone is evil towards you, respond pleasantly in thought and word and deed. Let God take care of someone else’s evil; you take care of your own evil, and see to it that it remains unborn.

27 He who profits illicitly troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes will live.

What do you think of people who beat their spouse or abuse their children? Pretty disgusting, right?

However, whereas these people trouble their own house a in direct way, if you get money you don’t deserve then you are just like them, except that you trouble your own house in an indirect way.

God cannot bless a house where people profit illegally.

What’s a good example of profiting illegally? One example, mentioned in this verse, is taking a bribe – that is, doing favors for others in exchange for money or goods or services or favor. When you push down a good person to strengthen a friendship with another, you are engaging in bribery.

So then, don’t do things for one person at the expense of another.

28 The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.

When someone asks you a question, and the answer can get you into trouble, or can hurt someone else, take your time to think about how to answer. In such a situation, the right thing to do is to not answer at all, or to postpone an answer; but don’t answer right away without thinking.

29 The LORD is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.

How do you know whether you are righteous or wicked? Try asking God for something. If He answers (and He may say ‘no’) then you know that He considers you righteous. But if you get nothing from Him then you know that you are wicked.

30 Bright eyes gladden the heart; good news puts fat on the bones.

If you want to make someone happy, give them good news, and do it with excitement (i.e. bright eyes).

If you want to keep your heart glad, learn to find ‘good’ in every news that you receive.

31 He whose ear listens to the life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.

No one starts out inherently wise; it is a learned skill. To learn wisdom, you need to pay attention when someone tells you about your lacks and your faults. Typically, your parents do that, and your teachers, and friends, and co-workers, your bosses, your enemies, and even your children.

They may do it in private, or in public – it shouldn’t matter to you, if your main goal is to become wise.

Don’t worry about where the lesson comes from; even fools can teach you wisdom. It all depends on how well you listen.

32 He who neglects discipline despises himself, but he who listens to reproof acquires understanding.

Theoretically, most (if not all) people want the best for themselves. But sometimes, we can despise, or even hate, ourselves, and not even know it.

After you listen, you have to put what you’ve heard into practice. If you don’t discipline yourself as you apply wisdom, you despise yourself.

If someone gave you money, wouldn’t you be pleased?

If you love wisdom as much as you love money, you will also be happy when someone teaches you wisdom.

33 The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility.

Most people want to look good in the presence of the people around them. That is, they want honor. If you want honor, you have to first learn humility.

Humility allows you to acknowledge that you are not perfect, and that you don’t perfectly know how to be perfect. As a result, when someone educates you on your imperfections, you don’t mind. Further, humility also allows you realize that your mind (and the mind of man) is not the source of wisdom, but God’s word is the source – the only source – of true wisdom, and wanting to please God (i.e. looking good in God’s eyes) is far better than looking good in man’s eyes.