This verse opens the saying in Proverbs 23:22–25.
Quick answer
Keep listening to the father who gave you life, and never let your mother's old age turn her into someone you dismiss. The verse guards the years when honoring parents stops being enforced and starts being chosen.
Read the whole unit
The saying frames its call to buy the truth (v. 23) with parents on either side: this verse's command to hear and not despise, and the closing picture of a father and mother rejoicing over a wise child (vv. 24–25).
Read the whole unit
A four-verse saying about honoring the people who formed you and the truth they handed you. It opens with a command spanning a lifetime, listen to the father who begot you, do not despise your mother when she is old (v. 22), sets its famous centerpiece, buy the truth and do not sell it (v. 23), and closes with the payoff seen from the parents' side: the father of the righteous greatly rejoices; let the mother who bore you be glad (vv. 24–25). The structure is a frame: parents at the beginning, parents at the end, and truth in the middle, because in this saying the two are one subject. The truth a son was taught and the parents who taught it are honored or despised together, and a child's wisdom is the one gift that reaches a parent's old age.
What this verse contributes
This verse contributes the timeline. "Who begot you" reaches back to your origin; "when she is old" reaches forward to her frailty. Between those two points, the balance of power reverses: the parents who once held everything become the ones who can be overlooked, contradicted, managed, despised. The command lands precisely there, where honor costs something and enforcement has ended. The fifth commandment's neglected second half was always about this season, and the sages repeat it because every generation is tempted to discount the old (17:6, 19:26, 20:20).
Related: Proverbs 1:8 · Proverbs 30:17 · Exodus 20:12
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.