This verse opens the prologue of a new collection, the Sayings of the Wise, Proverbs 22:17–24:22.
Quick answer
A new teacher takes the seat, and the first command is posture: ear inclined, heart applied. Wisdom's entrance exam has always been attention.
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The prologue runs five verses: bend toward the words (v. 17), keep them within you where they can reach the lips (v. 18), for the stated purpose, trust in the LORD (v. 19), written as reliable counsel (v. 20) so you can answer with words of truth (v. 21).
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At 22:17 the book changes voice. Solomon's one-line sayings give way to a new collection, the Sayings of the Wise (22:17–24:22), and it opens the way the father's lectures opened: incline your ear, apply your heart. The five-verse prologue names its goal with unusual directness, and the goal is not information: "so that your trust may be in the LORD" (v. 19). Everything that follows, warnings about the poor, anger, surety, landmarks, and tables, serves that single stated purpose.
One honest note belongs here, once. Verse 20 in the NKJV reads "excellent things"; many modern translations read "thirty sayings," reflecting a different understanding of a difficult Hebrew word, and scholars have long noticed that this collection resembles a numbered anthology, with an Egyptian parallel (the Instruction of Amenemope) often discussed alongside it. The exact division into thirty is disputed, and nothing in the teaching depends on settling it. This catalog follows common English-edition divisions, and no entry in the collection relitigates the question; this paragraph is its one home.
What this verse contributes
This verse supplies the doorway and its price of admission. "Incline your ear" is a body instruction, the physical lean of someone who has decided the speaker matters; "apply your heart" takes the lean inward. The collection will not shout over anyone's shoulder. Like the father's lectures before it (4:20), it opens by asking for the learner's whole orientation, because the sayings ahead are dense enough that a casual ear will carry none of them home.
Related: Proverbs 4:20–22 · Proverbs 2:1–2
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.