This verse sits inside the book's purpose statement, Proverbs 1:1–6.
The book's second audience: the already wise, who will hear and increase. Wisdom's mark is that it keeps enrolling; the wise man is defined by the fact that he is still listening.
The book opens with a door plaque and a syllabus. One verse of title, Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, and then a single five-verse sentence stating what the whole collection is for: to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive, to receive, to give, to understand. The infinitives stack up like a course catalog, and their range is the point. The book aims at moral skill (justice, judgment, equity), at practical shrewdness (prudence, discretion), and at literary competence (proverbs, enigmas, the words of the wise and their riddles), and it names two audiences at once: the simple and the young who need a starting point, and the already-wise who will hear and increase learning. Nobody graduates out of this book, and nobody is too green for it. The prologue makes one more quiet claim by its very form: wisdom here comes as literature, crafted sayings that must be pondered, not swallowed, which is why learning to read them well is itself listed among the book's goals. Everything ends at the threshold of verse 7, where the prologue hands the whole enterprise its foundation.
This verse contributes the prologue's surprise: after addressing beginners, the book turns to experts and expects them in the classroom too. The wise man "will hear", hearing is what made him wise and what keeps him so, and he will increase learning, acquire, the footnote's word, more wise counsel. This is the book's standing test for wisdom, applied everywhere from 9:9 (give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser) to 18:15 (the ear of the wise seeks knowledge): growth is the diagnostic. The person who has stopped learning has not arrived; he has stopped being wise, whatever he once was. No one outgrows this book, and the claim is issued in its fifth verse so no reader can mistake themselves for its exception.
Related: Proverbs 9:9 · Proverbs 18:15
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.