Proverbs 14:32 Commentary and Bible Study

Lawson says, ‘All must die; - but there is an immense difference between the death of the righteous and that of the wicked. This difference is not always discernible to observers, but it is real and wide, as the difference between heaven and hell.’ The verse starts with the realisation that the death of the wicked and the righteous may look pretty similar, but it goes on tell us the real state of affairs. For the wicked, the overwhelming factor in his death is his wickedness. The proverb has three points of contrast: the wicked versus the righteous, being driven away or cast down versus having hope, and (the least obvious and therefore the most interesting of the three) in his wickedness or in his evil versus in his death. The second and third contrasts combine to produce the powerful effect of the proverb, for they tell us the great advantage of righteousness even at the most needful time, or, we could say, even at the time when all other means for deliverance available to the individual are at their weakest. It is God to whom the righteous look when all their earthly powers fail. Death is the ultimate test of faith, for it is the experience in which man’s power is reduced to nothing and he must look to God who raises the dead in complete trust. Because God will not fail him at such a time but has promised to be with him at his most vulnerable moment, he can have hope. This hope is not an uncertain thrust into darkness, but is the sure confidence of the Christian in God who has never abandoned his own child as witnessed by a great crowd of witnesses. The righteous are those alone who have been born of God, given a new nature and set up in their hearts God’s law as the only standard by which they should live. The righteous have a refuge which is Christ. They look on him to deliver them from all the darkness and horror of death, for he has known all its horrors and repulsed them. They will be finally perfectly transformed in that last hour and reach the goal they aimed at from the time of conversion.But the wicked destroy themselves, for there is a connection between their evil – the evil they never stop pursuing – and their final downfall. In the providence of God the evil which they pursue becomes the means of their downfall. Justice rewards them with a punishment that connects their wickedness with their destruction. By doing so, God demonstrates the just consequences of sin, for the wicked persist even though they are warned through conscience, through human authority, and maybe through divine authority in Scripture, that the wages of sin is death. How often God has connected a man’s downfall with the particular sin which he chose to follow! In death, the stolen moments which the wicked have taken have run out. In that hour, if the wicked protest their shock at what has happened to them, God will tell them that they knew it all along. Why such a difference between two individuals in exactly the same outward circumstances? Because man is more than an animal; he alone of all creatures on earth is born under the law and he cannot remove himself from it. [It is right to see all proverbs through an evangelical interpretation. This is not painting every picture in the same colours but it is using the only right key to unlock them.]