The Stewardship of Insight: When to Be Silent Text: Proverbs 23:9
Introduction: The Error of Assumed Reasonableness
We live in an age that has made a god out of dialogue. The assumption that governs our public discourse, our evangelistic strategies, and even our private disagreements is that every person we meet is a reasonable actor. We believe that if we just present our arguments with enough clarity, with enough winsomeness, with enough peer reviewed footnotes, that the other person will necessarily be persuaded, or at least be willing to engage thoughtfully. This is one of the common mistakes that reasonable people make, the error of attributing their own love of reason to anyone they may happen to meet.
This is a profoundly unbiblical and therefore naive assumption. It is a sentimentality that gets Christians into a world of trouble. We think that every conversation is a good faith negotiation between two parties who simply have a correctable information deficit. But the Bible, and the book of Proverbs in particular, operates with a much more robust and realistic anthropology. Scripture teaches that there is a category of person called a fool, and the central problem with a fool is not a lack of information in his head, but a settled rebellion in his heart. His problem is not intellectual; it is moral. Folly is a settled character trait, a hardened posture of the soul against God and His created order.
Because we fail to make this biblical distinction, we often find ourselves in fruitless, exhausting, and spiritually debilitating arguments. We cast our pearls before swine, and then are shocked when they turn and tear us. We offer the bread of life to those who have no intention of eating it, and are dismayed when they trample it into the mud. This proverb before us is a bucket of cold water on all our sentimental theories of communication. It is a crucial piece of tactical wisdom. It teaches us that there are times when the wisest, godliest, and most faithful thing a man can do is shut his mouth. There are times when we should save our breath for cooling our porridge.
The Text
Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
For he will despise the insight of your speech.
(Proverbs 23:9 LSB)
The Command: A Prohibition on Wasted Words
The first clause is a straightforward command:
"Do not speak in the hearing of a fool..." (Proverbs 23:9a)
This is a divine injunction against wasting a precious resource. And what is that resource? The insight of your speech. Godly wisdom is not a cheap commodity to be dispensed carelessly. It is a treasure. Jesus uses the metaphor of pearls for the precious truths of the kingdom for a reason. Pearls are beautiful, costly, and the product of great suffering. The wisdom we have as Christians, the insights given to us by the Spirit of God through the Word of God, were purchased at an infinite price, the blood of Christ. To treat this wisdom as something to be tossed about indiscriminately is to be a poor steward of the mysteries of God.
Now, we must define our terms as the Bible does. A fool, in the scriptural sense, is not someone with a low IQ. A man can be simple and uneducated and be a devout and pious man of God. Conversely, a man can have multiple PhDs, run a university, and be a world class, triple distilled fool. A fool is one who has said in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). He is a scoffer, a mocker, one who hates instruction and despises correction. He is morally bent. His core problem is rebellion. He is not an honest seeker who is simply mistaken. He is a rebel who has suppressed the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). His ignorance is willful. He doesn't want to see.
So this proverb is telling us that once you have discerned that you are dealing with a man of this character, the rules of engagement change. This is not a command to be silent in the face of evil, or to never rebuke sin. The Bible is filled with commands to do just that. This is a command about a particular context. It is about the futility of offering "insightful speech" to a man whose ears are deliberately stopped. You are not to enter into a reasoned dialogue with a man who has no intention of listening to reason. Argument will not fix him. Your carefully crafted syllogisms will cascade off his back like water off a duck. The problem is not in his ears; it is in his heart.
The Reason: The Despising of Wisdom
The second clause gives the reason for the command, the basis for the prohibition.
"For he will despise the insight of your speech." (Proverbs 23:9b LSB)
Notice the verb: despise. This is not simple disagreement. It is not a failure to comprehend. It is contempt. The fool does not merely reject your wisdom; he holds it in contempt. He scorns it. To him, your pearls are pig-slop. Your reasoned arguments are an offense. Why? Because the very existence of objective truth and transcendent wisdom is a threat to the autonomous world he has constructed for himself. Your insight is a beam of light shot into the dark, musty basement of his rebellion, and he hates the light because his deeds are evil (John 3:19-20).
When you offer wisdom to a fool, you are not just offering information. You are offering a worldview that requires him to repent, to bow the knee, to submit to a standard outside of himself. And this is the one thing he will not do. His entire identity is wrapped up in being his own god, his own source of truth. So when you speak, he does not hear a reasonable proposition. He hears a declaration of war on his personal kingdom. And he responds accordingly, with scorn and mockery.
The result is not only that your words are wasted, but that the wisdom itself is profaned. The fool does not just ignore your words; he tramples them underfoot. He will twist them, mock them, and use them as ammunition against you. This is why Jesus follows his warning about swine with the phrase, "and turn and tear you to pieces" (Matthew 7:6). The fool's contempt for your wisdom will very quickly morph into a personal animosity toward you. He despises the message, and so he will come to despise the messenger.
Practical Application: The Discernment of Fools
So how do we apply this? This proverb requires immense discernment. It is not a blanket excuse for cowardice. We are called to be witnesses, to give a reason for the hope that is in us. So when do we speak, and when do we remain silent?
First, we should begin with the charitable assumption that the person we are talking to is not a fool. We should, as a matter of good manners and Christian grace, treat them as a reasonable person until they give us clear evidence to the contrary. We offer our words, our arguments, our testimony, in good faith.
But second, we must be prepared to cut our losses and go. We must pay attention to the feedback we are receiving. Is the person engaging with the substance of what you are saying? Or are they just mocking, scoffing, and changing the subject? Do they respond with rage or laughter when confronted with truth? Proverbs 29:9 says, "If a wise man contends with a foolish man, whether the fool rages or laughs, there is no peace." When you see that pattern, a refusal to engage, coupled with contemptuous rage or mockery, you are likely in the presence of a fool. At that point, your obligation to provide him with more insightful speech has ended.
This has massive implications for our modern controversies. Think of the debates over sexuality and gender. There are some people who are genuinely confused and looking for answers. To them, we owe patient, insightful speech. But there are many others who are hardened rebels. They are not interested in your exegesis or your appeals to natural law. They will only despise your words. To continue to debate them on their terms is to play the fool's game. Never try to teach a pig to whistle. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.
Our task is not to convert the unconvertible. Our task is to be faithful witnesses. Part of that faithfulness is knowing when to shake the dust from our feet. Words will not fix the problem of a hardened heart. Only the Spirit of God can address the heart of the problem, which is the heart. Until God does a regenerating work there, it is not possible for the Word to get through. But when He does, then real communication becomes possible.
Conclusion: Wisdom's Silence and the Speaking Savior
This proverb, then, is a call to a wise stewardship of our words. It is a guard against a particular kind of pride, the pride that thinks our arguments can accomplish what only the Holy Spirit can. It is a call to realism, to understand the spiritual state of the world we are trying to reach.
But we must also see this in light of the gospel. We must see this in light of the one who is Wisdom incarnate. The Lord Jesus Christ was the master of this principle. He could silence the Pharisees with a single question. He knew when to speak a parable and when to speak plainly. And He knew when to be silent. Before Caiaphas, He spoke. But before Herod, who was a manifest fool looking for a sign, a court trick, "he answered him nothing" (Luke 23:9). Before Pilate, He gave a crisp, clear testimony. But when the chief priests accused him wildly, "He gave him no answer, not even to a single charge" (Matthew 27:14).
Jesus did not cast his pearls before those who had demonstrated their swinish character. And yet, this same Jesus went to the cross for a world of fools. He went to the cross for us, who in our natural state despised the wisdom of God. The cross itself is the ultimate expression of the wisdom of God, a wisdom that the world calls foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). And God, in His sovereign grace, takes rebels who despise His wisdom, and through the foolishness of the cross, He breaks our hearts, opens our ears, and makes us wise unto salvation.
Therefore, our application of this proverb must be drenched in gospel humility. We recognize the futility of speaking to fools, not so that we can become arrogant and withdrawn, but so that we can be driven to our knees in prayer. We stop speaking to the fool so that we might start speaking to God on the fool's behalf. Because we know that our best arguments are useless, we must rely entirely on the regenerating power of the God who said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He is the only one who can take a heart that despises wisdom and transform it into a heart that treasures it above all things.