Proverbs 24:15 Commentary and Bible Study

These two proverbs in verses 15-16 are addressed to the wicked, but are given for the sake of the righteous. Though the Lord may warn the wicked and his warnings act as a restraint on their wickedness, he does not teach them as his children for they are not among those elect ones who are taught by God, who receive lessons to their eternal profit. Nothing works for the good of the wicked man, and the real purpose of these proverbs is to reassure the righteous that, although they may suffer attacks from the wicked, those attacks will not finally bring them down. God will not allow those that hate his people to triumph over them because although God disciplines and trains his people and may at times let them fall temporarily in order to teach them some necessary lesson, their falls will not be final but God will raise them up again. The wicked will fall never to rise again. When they invoke destruction on the righteous but they call for an enemy to act against the righteous which will in fact overpower themselves. Here then is a lesson about the resilience of the righteous. Let the wicked not imagine that they can triumph over the righteous and exclude them from the earth, and shut them out of God’s blessing altogether, or deprive them of an eternal inheritance – though they would very much like to do so – for God restores his people even though they appear to be weak, outnumbered, disadvantaged, cast down. The wicked must observe the strange phenomenon of a people who are loved by God and yet who often fall into trouble and who appear to be an easy target, and yet can never be finally defeated. Somehow the wicked are prevented from fully getting their way, and either through overconfidence or through some unexpected providence their hatred and their schemes against the righteous are thwarted.