Proverbs 23:19-23 is a fatherly appeal to live with intention, with restraint, and with reverence for wisdom. It is not just a warning against excess or poor habits; it is a call to set the heart deliberately on the right path and to protect truth as something priceless.
19 – Listen, my son, and be wise, and set your heart on the right path:
20 – Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat,
21 – for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.22 – Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
Proverbs 23:19-23 NIV
23 – Buy the truth and do not sell it, wisdom, instruction, and insight as well.
At its core, this passage teaches that the quality of our lives is shaped not by what we know, but by what we value enough to obey.
Setting the Heart on the Right Path
The instruction begins with a command to listen, not passively, but attentively. And wisdom requires humility; humility to “set your heart on the right path” is to choose direction over impulse. Life does not drift into wisdom; it drifts into disorder. So in other words, direction must be chosen.
The heart, in biblical language, represents the center of decision-making. When the heart is unguarded, the path becomes reactive, but when the heart is set, the path becomes intentional.
The warning against drunkenness and gluttony is not only about food and drink; it is about unchecked appetite. Appetite is neutral until it becomes a master. When desire governs discipline, the outcome is predictable: Loss, poverty, and degradation.
And excess dulls awareness; it numbs ambition. It trades tomorrow’s strength for today’s comfort. And the Scripture describes the result vividly: drowsiness and rags. Not because excess is immediately destructive, but because it slowly kills alertness, responsibility, and purpose.
Wisdom is Often Passed Down, Not Discovered Alone
The call to listen to one’s father and honor one’s mother highlights an often-forgotten truth: Wisdom is frequently inherited before it is understood. Experience speaks through generations, and to despise counsel is to repeat avoidable mistakes.
Honoring parents here is not just emotional respect; it is intellectual humility. It is the willingness to learn from those who have already paid the cost of ignorance.
Buy The Truth and Never Put It Up for Sale
The final command is the anchor of the passage: “Buy the truth and do not sell it, wisdom, instruction, and insight as well.” Truth has a cost; it demands discipline, restraint, and sometimes the sacrifice of popularity or pleasure.
Selling the truth happens quietly, when principles are traded for convenience, when convictions are compromised for comfort, or when wisdom is abandoned for short-term gain.
To buy the truth is to invest in it daily, to protect it, live by it, and refuse to exchange it for anything less valuable, and this reminds me of another article I wrote a while ago: Don’t Sell Out, Don’t be Cheap.
The Daily Stoic Podcasthas come be one of my favorite podcast to listen to and just recently I listened to on of the episode that has got me thinking ever since I did, and you have already seen from the title, the topic is “Don’t Sell Out”
The episode started with a question Epictetus asked in one of his discourses: “Your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word, your freedom. For what would you sell these things?”
Like I have come to love asking my readers, take a moment to think about it, you, yes you! Take a moment, take it personal because I’m asking you, so again to you my friend: “Your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word, your freedom. For what would you sell these things?”
And just as the Ryan Holiday went further to state that; the answer, too often, is “for pennies on the dollar.” We trade our word for a small edge in business. We mortgage our self-respect for fancy friends or fleeting fame. We auction our freedom for jobs that drain our souls or relationships that chip away at our dignity.
And this is true for many of us, we trade respect, trustworthiness, peace of mind, freedom from fear, our freedom, our words for pennies or at best even for millions, we sell our soul or relationship for fancy friends, we come to the point where our words no longer carry water, holds no meaning even to ourselves, sell ourselves and core values for materials things, chipping away at our dignity, in pursuit for fame and recognition, at the core we do all of these at the expense of my soul, and become properties to people and materials, again at the expense of our identity, values and principle.
But stoicism points out that virtues are priceless and the man who “sells out,” sells his soul, make himself a property, and prisoner to be confined to the four corners of no identity, or an identity that is unworthy of honor. Stoicism points out that these virtues are non-negotiable and we should not sell ourselves short by putting a price on them.
Continue Reading: Don’t Sell Out, Don’t Be Cheap
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Conclusion
Proverbs 23:19-23 reminds us that life rewards direction, restraint, and reverence for truth. And that wisdom is not automatic; it must be chosen, purchased, and guarded.
So my dearest readers: Set your heart on the right path! Govern your appetites! Honor instruction! And once you possess the truth, never sell it, because everything else in life depends on it.
