Proverbs 5:13

Proverbs 5:13, in plain English

Back then, he had teachers and mentors trying to guide him, but he wouldn't pay attention to them—he thought he knew better.

Why it's here

The man is now seeing that the resources for wisdom were available. He had teachers, mentors, people who cared enough to try to instruct him. But youthful pride, or distraction, or the seduction of the forbidden path convinced him he didn't need their counsel.

Who's speaking

The older man, continuing his own reflection

Where it sits in the story

This echoes a pattern throughout Scripture: God sends counselors, prophets, teachers, wise friends—people who see what we can't see about ourselves. The tragedy often isn't that wisdom isn't available; it's that we don't incline our ear to hear it.

The scholarly reading

The man admits he failed to listen to his teachers and mentors—the very figures who possessed the wisdom that could have protected him.

Language and setting

The parallelism between 'voice of my teachers' (בְקוֹל־מְלַמְּדַי, bequol melamdai) and 'ear to my mentors' (אֶל־מוֹרַי אָזְנִי, el moray azni) emphasizes both auditory receptivity and relational submission. In the ancient wisdom tradition, the teacher-student relationship was not merely informational but formational—it involved habituation in virtue. To refuse to listen was to refuse a relationship. The confession 'I did not' (לא־הִטִּיתִי, lo hittiti) uses the same verb as verse 1's 'incline your ear'—the student had been offered the posture of receptivity but refused to assume it. Jewish and Christian commentators alike have seen this as the quintessential statement of human culpability: you knew the path; you chose to ignore those who knew it.

Voice

The elderly man's voice of remorse, looking back on his deliberate rejection of guidance.

Significance

This echoes the prophet Jeremiah's indictment of Israel for refusing to listen to God's messengers (Jeremiah 7:25-26) and anticipates Jesus's lament over Jerusalem, 'How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing' (Matthew 23:37).

11At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are spent,

12and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!

13I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my mentors.

14I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”

15Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.

Read all of Proverbs 5 — The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey — but her end is bitter as wormwood. A warning that sounds ancient but arrives fresh every generation.