Scripture Daily

Context No. 1507 of 4322 · Proverbs

Context · Reflection

Proverbs 24:17-22: in context

17Don’t rejoice when your enemy falls. Don’t let your heart be glad when he is overthrown, 18lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him. 19Don’t fret yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious of the wicked; 20for there will be no reward to the evil man. The lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out. 21My son, fear the LORD and the king. Don’t join those who are rebellious, 22for their calamity will rise suddenly. Who knows what destruction may come from them both?

These proverbs counsel restraint of the heart even toward enemies. Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the LORD see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him. Do not fret over evildoers or envy the wicked, for the evil have no future, and the lamp of the wicked will be put out. Fear the LORD and the king, and do not join with the rebellious, for their calamity will rise suddenly.

The command that arrests is the one about an enemy's downfall: do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles. This is a hard word, because gloating over the fall of one who wronged us is one of the natural pleasures of the human heart. When someone who has hurt us, opposed us, or treated us badly finally stumbles and falls, the heart wants to rejoice, to feel the satisfaction of seeing them get what they deserved. And scripture says do not. God does not want us to delight in the ruin of another, even an enemy, even a deserved ruin; the passage goes so far as to say that our gloating might displease the LORD enough to turn his anger from the very enemy we are gloating over. There is a searching discipline of the heart in this. It is not enough merely to refrain from harming our enemies; we are asked not even to take pleasure in their downfall when it comes by other means. The vindictive glee that rises when someone who wronged us suffers is itself something God does not want in us. Behind the command lies a truth about God's own heart: he takes no pleasure in the death even of the wicked, and he does not want his people to take a pleasure he does not take himself. To guard the heart against gloating, to refuse the satisfaction of an enemy's fall, is to be conformed a little more to the God who desires not the ruin of sinners but their turning. Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.

When someone who wronged me stumbles and falls, does my heart rejoice and gloat, taking satisfaction in their ruin, or can I obey this hard command not to be glad at an enemy's fall, guarding my heart from a vindictive glee that God himself does not share?

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