Week 24 Proverbs 11
This is a two-phrase proverb:
1) God rescues the godly from danger
2) God lets the wicked fall into trouble.
What’s similar in both phrases is the ‘danger’ or ‘trouble’ that two people are headed into. The big difference is the people…
Person #1 is a godly person who’s facing danger
Person #2 is a wicked person headed for trouble.
The question the proverb is asking is: ‘what does the Lord do about it?’
And the Answer is: ‘it all depends’. These are two very different people and that makes a big difference:
The Lord rescues Person #1
But he lets Person #2 fall.
With Person #1 the Lord takes preventive action – he intervenes. But with Person #2 he does nothing. No intervention. No preemptive action. He lets gravity take the falling guy where he wants to fall.
I like this proverb because it’s almost perfectly balanced (with some two-phrase proverbs the two phrases don’t really connect very well). But not this one.
And I like it because it’s a nice tidy generalization about how things tend to work. I don’t think it’s an Absolute & Ironclad Law. There are times when a person who reveres the Lord might end up deep in the Danger Zone. And there are times when a piratical brute lives a trouble-free life. But in general the Lord looks out for his people. And the others he lets fall.
Note: quote from Proverbs 11:8 (NLT). Added note: Proverbs 13:5 & 19:22 are examples of a couple of what I think are not-so-well-balanced proverbs.