Proverbs 12:21 Commentary and Bible Study

The word used here for evil is literally the word to pant, to breathe very heavily and rapidly. In its usage in the Bible it indicates exhaustion, deep distress and mourning. Now in our culture, when we have a funeral, we tend not to make much noise. In the East, the culture is a little different, and they tended to make the maximum noise at a funeral, along with sobbing, sighing, and heavy breathing, and this is used also as a mourning word: to pant. That gives you an idea of the kind of evil which is in mind here. No evil shall befall the righteous, nothing that causes them to be utterly dismayed and in despair.In a sense it is literally true, nothing will happen to a child of God that can finally harm or undo him. Everything that happens to us, even the worst things that hurt us deeply and badly do not ultimately bring us down and shatter us, because everything that the Lord allows to happen to us, has a sanctifying influence. He brings good out of all things. He turns all things to the account of his people. We know these truths well. But the wicked shall be filled with mischief, and mischief is the word for sorrow and calamity and trouble. The world lets him down, he gets no help from God, he suffers increasing addiction to his appetites and sins, he accumulates increasing guilt as he draws nearer to the Day of Judgement; there are many deep disappointments along the way. This proverb is about the confidence which the righteous tongue can have as it faces the common miseries of mankind in a fallen world. It is a disproportionate blessing that we are delivered from miseries over which we have very little power, by doing what lies (by the enabling of the Holy Spirit) within our power, and making our tongues to serve righteousness. The evil referred to in the first half of the verse is, as Wardlaw says, evil suffered, not evil done. Such evil may be the result of our own foolishness, but much is due to the fall, or to the hostility of our enemies. As believers we cannot remove that hostility and our obedience to God may even cause it to increase, but we do have power to master our tongues, and here we are given a further incentive to do so. Though we may face fierce battles in the process, the right use of the tongue will bring down the blessing of the Lord on our lives. Our enemies will not be able to prevent the Lord blessing us as he has means at his disposal which none are able to thwart. Does this mean that the Christian does not suffer the distresses of disappointment, sorrow, bereavement, and earthly loss which the world also suffers? Not at all, but by the grace of God these things are unable to harm our eternal interests. God has a way of working that rewards faith in his children under severe trials, and turns them into a means of blessing. The wicked on the other hand have a false expectation of the future. While believers are prone to be pessimistic about the future because they forget the goodness and power of God, unbelievers are often optimists about the world but unjustifiably so. Just as God secretly works for the good of his people, so he secretly works to bring down the ungodly, and all that they assert about the world fails to materialise.