“The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.” (Proverbs 10:8)

I am going to make a hunch that no one likes to be told what to do. However, as adults we realize that taking direction from other people is just par for the course. It may be from our supervisor at work or even our spouse at the house, at some point we know that tasking is coming our way – and not of our own design. Today’s verse attempts to correlate how we accept these commands to the difference between being wise and foolish.  Specifically this proverb states that, “The wise in heart accept commands.” Meaning that wisdom is achieved, in part, by following the directions of others. Now for this to be true, we also need to assume that those who are giving the commands are in fact wise people themselves. But I believe, Solomon (the author of this proverb), was making a distinction between just being a “yes man” and making a honest discernment of what has been asked of you.  You see, to take direction from others means you first need to hear them. And not just to hear, but to actually listen and comprehend what the “command” is and how it should be carried out. The contrast being setup is one between the babbling fool and the wise active listener. The “chattering fool” goes on and on, filling the conversation with empty and meaningless words. While the active listener becomes wise by taking in information with the intent of learning. The fool’s only purpose for listening is to hunt the pause in the conversation so that they can jump in with their own content. Whereby the fool never really learns anything because they were not listening to understand, but to conjure up their next word salad. So I’ll leave you with this thought. Accepting commands means first listening and then acting on it, this is wisdom. Foolishness is when your own words are more import to you than anything else is.