17 Bible Verses About Counseling: Seeking Advice and Giving It

Proverbs 15:22

“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.”

Reflection: The proverb sets plans made without counsel against plans made with many advisers. Advisers translates a form of yaats, the verb for giving counsel. The next verse speaks of answers: “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!”

Proverbs 11:14

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”

Reflection: This saying works at the scale of a whole people: without guidance “a people falls.” Proverbs 24:6 repeats its second half with war in view: “for by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.” Counselors in both verses translates a form of yaats.

Proverbs 19:20

“Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.”

Reflection: Advice and instruction are paired, and the reward comes later: “that you may gain wisdom in the future.” The word for advice is etsah. The next verse uses the same noun for God: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand,” where purpose translates etsah. Within two verses, then, one word covers both the advice a person listens to and the purpose of the LORD.

Proverbs 12:15

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Reflection: The fool in this proverb is sure of himself: his way “is right in his own eyes.” The wise man is marked by one habit, that he “listens to advice,” and the word is etsah again. The next verse sets a fool against the prudent: “The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.”

Psalm 32:8

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”

Reflection: Headed “A Maskil of David,” the psalm begins with forgiveness: the psalmist kept silent about his sin until he confessed it and was forgiven (32:3-5). In verse 8 an “I” promises to instruct, teach and counsel, and the psalm does not say whether the speaker is God or David. Counsel is yaats, the verb Moses’ father-in-law uses in Exodus 18:19. Verse 9 sets the promise against “a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.”

Exodus 18:19-20

“Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do.”

Reflection: Moses’ father-in-law watched him judge the people alone “from morning till evening” (Exodus 18:13-14) and told him, “What you are doing is not good” (18:17). His advice was for Moses to bring the people’s cases to God and teach them the laws, while able men who feared God judged the small matters as chiefs of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens (18:21-22). “I will give you advice” uses yaats, the verb of Psalm 32:8. Moses “listened to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said” (18:24).

1 Kings 12:8

“But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him.”

Reflection: Jeroboam and the assembly of Israel asked Solomon’s son Rehoboam to lighten the heavy yoke his father had laid on them. Rehoboam began by asking the old men “who had stood before Solomon,” who told him to serve the people and “speak good words to them” (12:6-7). He followed the young men instead and answered, “My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (12:14), after which Israel made Jeroboam king and “none that followed the house of David but the tribe of Judah only” (12:20). The narrator also calls the outcome “a turn of affairs brought about by the LORD” to fulfill the word spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite (12:15).

Psalm 1:1-2

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Reflection: Psalm 1 opens with a man who does not walk in “the counsel of the wicked,” using etsah, the noun Proverbs uses for good advice. The verbs move from walking to standing to sitting. In place of that counsel, verse 2 puts the law of the LORD, on which he meditates “day and night,” and verse 3 compares him to “a tree planted by streams of water.”

James 1:5

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

Reflection: The verse picks up a word from the one before it: steadfastness under trial is to leave believers “lacking in nothing” (1:4), and “if any of you lacks wisdom,” he is to ask God. The asking has a condition, “let him ask in faith, with no doubting” (1:6), and the doubter is called “double-minded” (1:8). Later in the letter James describes the wisdom that comes from God: “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17).

Isaiah 9:6

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Reflection: Isaiah gives this name to a child born to rule “on the throne of David” (9:7). The noun counselor is formed from yaats. The King James Version prints “Wonderful, Counsellor” with a comma, as two names, where the ESV joins them into one. Matthew 4:13-16 quotes the opening of the same prophecy, Isaiah 9:1-2, when Jesus moves to Capernaum in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.

Isaiah 11:2

“And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.”

Reflection: The Spirit rests on “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” (11:1), a descendant of David’s father, and is named in pairs: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD. Counsel here is etsah. The next verse shows the gifts put to use in judging: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear” (11:3).

John 14:26

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

Reflection: Jesus says this at supper, after the devil had put it into the heart of Judas to betray him (John 13:2). The Greek title is parakletos, which the ESV renders “Helper,” the King James Version “Comforter” and the Revised Standard Version “Counselor”; 1 John 2:1 uses the same word for Jesus as “an advocate with the Father.” In this verse the Spirit teaches and brings to remembrance what Jesus said, and John 16:13 adds that he “will guide you into all the truth.”

Proverbs 20:5

“The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.”

Reflection: Purpose translates etsah, and the King James Version renders the line “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water.” The saying places the counsel inside the person and gives the man of understanding the work of drawing it out. The same chapter uses the word for planning: “Plans are established by counsel; by wise guidance wage war” (Proverbs 20:18).

Proverbs 27:9

“Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.”

Reflection: The earnest counsel is a friend’s, and the verses around it also speak of friends: “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (27:5-6), and “Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend” (27:10). Counsel is etsah. The chapter belongs to the proverbs of Solomon that “the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied” (Proverbs 25:1).

Galatians 6:1

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

Reflection: Paul addresses “you who are spiritual” straight after listing gentleness among the fruit of the Spirit and urging the Galatians to “keep in step with the Spirit” (5:22-25). Restore is katartizo, and the Strong’s entry on Bible Hub explains its use here as one who “by correction may be brought back into the right way.” The warning that follows is for the one doing the restoring: “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

1 Thessalonians 5:14

“And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

Reflection: The first three instructions each match a condition, and the fourth covers them all: the idle are admonished, the fainthearted encouraged, the weak helped, and everyone treated with patience. Admonish is noutheteo, the verb used two verses earlier for the leaders “who admonish you” (5:12). Paul uses it again about the idle in 2 Thessalonians 3:15: “Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”

2 Timothy 2:24-25

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.”

Reflection: Paul writes to Timothy, who is to have nothing to do with “foolish, ignorant controversies” because “they breed quarrels” (2:23). The Lord’s servant corrects with gentleness and leaves the outcome with God: “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2:25).