Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Proverbs

[Vivian]

Proverbs 24:17 says:

“Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them.”

So is “falling”/ misfortune caused from God’s wrath?

[jimwalton]

It's a warning against having a vindictive attitude, like people who are saying, when Donald Trump caught Covid, "I hope he dies," and then they would have a party if he did. So basically it's saying, "Love your enemy."

But you're specifically asking about the last part. It's fair to say that sometimes people's misfortunes are the judgment of God on them, or at least the natural consequences of their wrongdoing, which in the Bible could also at times be identified as God's doing ("Be sure your sin will find you out," Numbers 32.23). Judgment and vengeance are, after all, in God's wheelhouse (Dt. 32.35; Rom. 12.17-21).

The point of the proverb is that if you're callous enough to rejoice at someone else's pain, God just may visit you with some pain of your own.

But we are not to think that all suffering and pain are God's doing. The teaching of the Bible is clearly against that claim. The Bible is strong (especially the book of Job) that that is not how life works (the retribution principle: that good people get blessed and bad people get cursed and judged). That's not how God usually acts. Often He saves judgment for the afterlife.