Proverbs 17:16 - Exposition

Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom? A fool thinks that there is a royal road to wisdom, and that it, like other things, is to be purchased with reentry. Vulgate, Quid prodest stulto habere divitias, cum sapientiam emere non possit? The rabbis in later time were not allowed to take fees for teaching; but it was customary to make offerings to seers and wise men, when their services were engaged or their advice was asked (see the case of Saul and Samuel, 1 Samuel 9:7 , 1 Samuel 9:8 ). The last clause gives the reason why it is useless for a fool to try to learn wisdom even at a large expenditure on teachers. Seeing he hath no heart to it; i.e. no capability for receiving it; his mental digestion cannot assimilate it. The heart, as we have already noticed, is regarded as the seat of the understanding. Thus the LXX ; "Why doth a fool have wealth? for a man without heart cannot acquire wisdom." In the Gospel Christ calls his disciples "fools and slow of heart to believe what the prophets had written, and himself opened their mind ( τὸν νοῦν ), that they might understand the Scriptures" ( Luke 24:25 , Luke 24:45 ). The Septuagint and Vulgate here introduce a distich derived from portions of Proverbs 17:19 , Proverbs 17:20 , "He who raises his house high seeketh destruction; and he who perversely declineth from learning ( ὁ δὲ σκολιάζων τοῦ μαθεῖν ) shall fall into evils."