Articles
Do Proverbs Promise Too Much?
When the tempest passes, the wicked is no more,
but the righteous is established forever.
Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
so is the sluggard to those who send him.
The fear of the LORD prolongs life,
but the years of the wicked will be short.
The hope of the righteous brings joy,
but the expectation of the wicked will perish.
The way of the LORD is a stronghold to the blameless,
but destruction to evildoers.
The righteous will never be removed,
but the wicked will not dwell in the land.
(Prov 10:25-30)
Does this section of Proverbs promise too much? Look at what it says about the righteous and the wicked!
The righteous stand firm forever (10:25), have a long life (10:27), have joy as their prospect (10:28), have God’s way as a refuge (10:29), and will never be uprooted (10:30). By contrast, the wicked are swept away when the storm comes (10:25), have their years cut short (10:27), have their hopes come to nothing (10:28), are have God’s way as a source of ruin (10:29), and are ultimately expelled from the land (10:30).
The language of never and forever is incredibly strong. Are the righteous really guaranteed that much blessing? Are the wicked really guaranteed that kind of destruction? We can look around us and easily find numerous temporal exceptions to these things! There are many seemingly “righteous” people who die suddenly and unexpectedly, or who get uprooted, or who suffer, or who lose everything. There are also many definitely “wicked” people who live a long life, win victories over their enemies, get everything they want (it seems), and can’t be stopped by anyone.
How do we deal with this?
One solution that has been attempted is to assume that all the “righteous” people who suffer are really just secretly evil people who had everyone fooled. They are suffering, so they must be hiding some secret sin that no one else sees! In fact, this is a huge chunk of the argument in the book of Job, where Job’s friends assume that he must have done something bad, since he was suffering so horrifically. For example:
Eliphaz: “Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?” (Job 4:7)
Bildad: “Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers.” (Job 8:20)
Zophar: “But the eyes of the wicked will fail; all way of escape will be lost to them, and their hope is to breathe their last.” (Job 11:20)
More examples could be provided of this kind of thinking. The main point is that Job’s friends see these kinds of proverbs as absolute rules without exceptions. Nobody perishes while innocent. God doesn’t reject the blameless. The fact that Job was suffering was proof positive to them that he was neither innocent nor blameless. Of course, since God explicitly says at the end of the book that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are wrong (Job 4:7-8), this solution is unsatisfactory.
Another solution is to assume that proverbs are not absolute truths, but rather general promises with exceptions. The righteous are usually blessed. The wicked usually suffer. But the problem with this is first that it still doesn’t really fit our picture of human experience, and second, that some of the proverbs appear to actually claim universality (hence words like “never”). This is a bit unnerving if we want to say that they are not universal truths.
A third solution is to see these as promises that have their fulfillment not in this life but in the next life. In the next life, the righteous get blessing and the wicked get punishment without exception. Everyone gets their deserved comeuppance. In this case, we might look to the example of Jesus. Jesus was a righteous man, but his years were cut short by crucifixion! Does Prov 10:27 not work in his case? Lo and behold, the fear of the Lord added days! He was granted new life by the resurrection of the dead!
The bottom line is that Proverbs do describe the way the present world should work and can work (ideally). However, they also describe the way the next world will work—resurrection from the dead resolves the difficulty that exists between the Proverb’s ideal and our experience’s realty. In that sense, while proverbs are advice for the here and now, they are also promises, not for this life, but for the next. Let us all strive to attain the true reward of the upright!
