Proverbs 9:10-12

The introduction ends where it began. Chapter 1, verse 7 hung the motto over the door of the whole book — "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" — and here, at the close of the ninth chapter, Solomon hangs it again, so the introduction is framed by it on both ends. When Scripture repeats something, it isn't filler; what is repeated is what God most intends to be impressed. If you take one sentence out of the first nine chapters of Proverbs, this is the sentence.

And it explains the scorner-rule we just read. Why can't the scorner be taught? Because all wisdom begins with the fear of the LORD — and the scorner's entire posture is the refusal of that starting point. You cannot build the second story of a house for a man who will not let you pour the foundation. Until reverence for God enters, instruction doesn't fix a man; it bounces off him — or hardens him. Man is not a thermometer, rising automatically with every degree of light applied; without a change of heart, more light just casts darker shadows. That is why the fear of the LORD must be the beginning — there is no door into wisdom around it.

Verse 12 then makes the whole nine chapters personal with surgical precision: "If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." God is not enriched by your wisdom or wounded by your scorn — the scorner can no more injure God than a man can hurt the wind by punching it. Every consequence comes home to you. Your faith cannot be inherited from your parents or borrowed from your wife, and your scorn cannot be billed to your circumstances or your church or your upbringing. One man, one ledger. And for the man whose ledger is hopeless, the gospel's whole shining offer is a Substitute who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" — the sins of a lifetime fall either on the sinner alone or on the One who bore sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). Alas for the man who is alone when the reckoning comes.