The Scavenger's Curse Text: Proverbs 30:17
Introduction: The Culture War Begins at Home
We live in a generation that has declared war on authority. Every institution is suspect, every hierarchy is questioned, and every standard is ridiculed. But this did not begin in the halls of Congress, or in the university faculty lounge, or on the streets with screaming protestors. The revolution, like all true revolutions, began in the home. It began with a sneer. It began with a rolling of the eyes. It began with the quiet, contemptuous spirit of a child toward his parents. Our entire civilization is teetering because we have forgotten, despised, and mocked the first and most basic form of government that God established on earth: the family.
The fifth commandment, to honor father and mother, is the lynchpin of a stable society. It is the first commandment with a promise, that your days may be long in the land. This means that the inverse is also true. A society that dishonors father and mother will not have long days in the land. It is a society under a curse, a society that is dying. And the book of Proverbs, being intensely practical, does not speak of this curse in abstract, gentle terms. It does not say that such a person will have a lower credit score or fewer friends on social media. No, the Holy Spirit, through Agur, gives us an image so visceral, so stomach-churning, that our modern, sentimental sensibilities want to look away. But we must not look away. We must stare right at it, because this is the reality of sin. This is the logic of rebellion.
The proverb before us is not a quaint, agrarian metaphor. It is a theological statement about the nature of covenantal reality. It teaches us that certain sins have built-in consequences. There are laws of spiritual physics, and when you mock the authority that God has placed directly over you, you are stepping off a cliff. The fall is not arbitrary; it is the necessary result. This verse is a stark, bloody warning about the end of the child who despises the foundation of his own existence.
The Text
The eye that mocks a father
And despises obedience to a mother,
The ravens of the valley will pick it out,
And the young eagles will eat it.
(Proverbs 30:17 LSB)
The Sin of the Eye
Let us first consider the nature of the transgression.
"The eye that mocks a father And despises obedience to a mother..." (Proverbs 30:17a)
The sin here is located in "the eye." This is significant. The eye is the lamp of the body. It is the organ of perception, of attitude. Jesus tells us that if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. The sin described here is not just an outward act of rebellion; it is an inward disposition of contempt. It is a posture of the heart that manifests itself in a look, a glance, a sneer.
It is the eye that "mocks a father." To mock is to treat with scorn, to ridicule. This is the spirit that sees the father not as a God-given authority, a source of wisdom and protection, but as a fool. It is the eye that sees his father's rules as arbitrary, his wisdom as outdated, and his authority as illegitimate. This is the sin of Ham, who saw his father Noah's nakedness and, instead of covering it with honor, went out to mock him to his brothers. The result was a curse on his line. This mocking spirit is the seed of all cultural decay.
And it "despises obedience to a mother." The word for despise here means to hold in contempt, to treat as worthless. The authority of the father and the mother are presented together, as they are throughout Proverbs. This is God's design for the household government. The father is the head, but he and his wife are one flesh, and they are to be a united front of authority over their children. To despise the mother's instruction is to despise the fabric of the home. It is to say that her nurture, her guidance, her very being is contemptible.
Notice the progression. The father is mocked, which is a sin of intellectual pride. The mother's obedience is despised, which is a sin of willful rebellion. The child who does this has set himself up as the judge of his own creators. He has made himself a little god in the nursery, and this is an arrogance that the true God will not tolerate.
The Sanction of the Scavengers
The consequence for this sin is as specific as it is gruesome.
"...The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it." (Proverbs 30:17b)
This is covenantal language. This is the language of curses. In Deuteronomy 28, as God is laying out the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience, He warns that the rebellious will be struck down before their enemies, and their "corpses shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away" (Deut. 28:26). To be left unburied, to be consumed by scavengers, was the ultimate sign of shame and divine abandonment in the ancient world. It meant you died alone, outside the camp, cut off from the covenant people.
The imagery here is precise. "The ravens of the valley" and "the young eagles." These are not songbirds. These are unclean birds of prey. They are nature's cleanup crew for the dead. And what do they target? The eye. The very organ that committed the sin is the organ that will be judged. This is the principle of lex talionis, an eye for an eye. The eye that looked with contempt will be plucked out and consumed. The punishment fits the crime with a terrifying, poetic justice.
This is not to say that every teenager who rolls his eyes at his parents will literally be eaten by birds. Proverbs are statements of general, normative truth. They describe how God has structured the world to work. The principle is this: a life that begins with contempt for God-given authority will end in shame, ruin, and desolation. The one who will not be governed by his father in the home will eventually be governed by the magistrate, or by the consequences of his own folly. He will end up in a "valley" of his own making, a place of death, where the scavengers of this life, whether they be addictions, or destructive relationships, or financial ruin, will come to pick his life apart, piece by piece.
Think of Absalom. He despised his father David. He rebelled and sought to usurp the throne. And how did he die? Hanging by his hair from a tree, helpless, until Joab and his men thrust him through. He was then thrown into a pit in the forest, a dishonorable burial, a feast for whatever creatures found him. The proverb was fulfilled in his life and death.
The Gospel for Mocking Eyes
This is a hard word. It is meant to be. It is meant to drive us to terror, and then to repentance. Because every single one of us, in our fallen nature, has this mocking spirit within us. Our rebellion against our earthly parents is just a symptom of our deeper rebellion against our Heavenly Father. We have all looked at God's law with contempt. We have all mocked His authority and despised His commands. By the standard of this proverb, we all deserve to have our eyes plucked out.
But this is where the glory of the gospel crashes in. There was another Son who was cast out into the valley of death. There was another who was abandoned, shamed, and left for dead outside the camp. Jesus Christ, the perfect Son who always honored His Father, took the scavenger's curse upon Himself for us.
On the cross, He was mocked. "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!" (Luke 23:35). His eyes, which had only ever looked on His Father with love and obedience, were plunged into darkness. He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He bore the ultimate curse of being cut off from the covenant so that we, the mockers, could be brought near.
Because of what Christ has done, the curse is reversed. God does not give us what our mocking eyes deserve. Instead, He gives us new eyes. He performs a spiritual transplant. As Paul says, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). He takes our eyes of contempt and gives us eyes of faith. He takes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh, that we might look upon Him, and upon the authorities He has placed over us, with honor, love, and true obedience.
Therefore, the application is twofold. For the young person here, hear the warning of God. Do not trifle with the fifth commandment. Your attitude toward your parents is a direct reflection of your attitude toward God. Repent of every mocking glance, every contemptuous thought. Ask God to give you a heart of honor. Your life depends on it.
And for all of us, parents and children alike, we must flee to the cross. We are all guilty. We have all been rebels. But in Christ, the curse is broken. He was consumed so that we could be cherished. He was shamed so that we could be honored. He was blinded by death so that we could see God. Turn from your sin, look to Him, and live.