Proverbs 17:21 - Meaning and Application

This verse says very strongly what many wise and good people have felt: how painful it is to have a foolish, wicked child. It shows, first, how uncertain all earthly comforts are. We are often disappointed in them, and the very thing we hoped would give us the most joy can become our deepest burden.

There is joy when a man’s child is born, but if that child later turns sinful, even his own father may wish he had never been born. Absalom, David’s son, had a name that meant “my father’s peace,” yet he became David’s greatest trouble. This should make parents humble in their hopes for children and careful in the delight they take in them, because children may one day become a grief to them.

At the same time, a father in that case should not complain as though the trouble came from nowhere. If his son is a fool, he is a fool of his own begetting, and the father must bear that cross as something that comes with being a parent. This is the more true because Adam, the first man, passed on his own likeness to his children, so human nature is touched by sin from the start.

The verse also shows how unwise we are when we let one affliction, and this kind of child is one of the hardest, swallow up our sense of many blessings. A father may be so hurt by a foolish son that he has no joy left in anything else. Yet he should remember that even that sorrow does not cancel all his other mercies, and there are still enough joys to outweigh it.