Proverbs 17:25

Proverbs 17:25, in plain English

When your child lives foolishly, it brings deep grief to both parents—it wounds the father's pride and breaks the mother's heart in a uniquely painful way.

Why it's here

Solomon names both mother and father here, acknowledging that foolishness in a child affects parents differently but equally. The mother's special mention of 'bitterness' suggests the particular anguish of the one who carried and birthed that child, only to watch them reject wisdom.

Who's speaking

Solomon, speaking from observation of families torn apart by a child's refusal to grow in wisdom.

Where it sits in the story

We see this echoed in the father's pain in the parable of the prodigal son, and throughout Scripture whenever God's people disappoint Him—there's always this note of personal anguish from the one who loves. It's part of what makes foolishness so costly.

The scholarly reading

A foolish son inflicts anguish on his father and bitter suffering on his mother, reversing the natural joy that children are meant to bring their parents.

Language and setting

This verse echoes Proverbs 10:1 and 17:21, suggesting this was a preoccupation of the wisdom teachers—the seemingly epidemic problem of foolish offspring who refused instruction. The Hebrew נָקוּב (nāqûb, pierces/wounds) and מָרִים (mārim, bitter) carry visceral emotional weight: the father experiences piercing pain; the mother tastes bitterness. Notably, this is one of the few proverbs that names the mother explicitly alongside the father—suggesting that while patriarchal structures framed the household, the wisdom teachers recognized that maternal suffering paralleled paternal grief. The verse's placement within Proverbs 17 follows immediately after teaching about attention and focus (v. 24), suggesting that foolishness involves a failure to attend to parental wisdom and instruction. The accumulation of such proverbs indicates that generational conflict and the pain of children who rejected instruction were lived realities in ancient Israel.

Voice

The wisdom teachers, likely drawing on their role as educators attempting to motivate sons to accept instruction by appealing to familial love and obligation.

Significance

This verse resonates throughout Scripture with the pathos of parents encountering their children's waywardness—David's anguish over Absalom (2 Samuel 18:33) perhaps the most devastating instance. It establishes a principle that personal folly has relational consequences, extending beyond the individual to wound those who brought them into being. Christian thinkers, particularly Augustine in his Confessions, reflected extensively on the inverse—the joy that filial obedience brings parents and, by extension, the joy that filial devotion to God brings the divine Father. The verse also undergirds the commandment to honor father and mother, suggesting that such honor is not abstract obligation but concrete prevention of grief.

23A wicked man takes a covert bribe to subvert the course of justice.

24Wisdom is the focus of the discerning, but the eyes of a fool wander to the ends of the earth.

25A foolish son brings grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.

26It is surely not good to punish the innocent or to flog a noble for his honesty.

27A man of knowledge restrains his words, and a man of understanding maintains a calm spirit.

Read all of Proverbs 17 — Better a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife. Sometimes less of everything is more of what matters.