Meaning of “The Righteous Falls 7 Times and Rise Again”
“For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity” Proverbs 24: 16.
The Proverbs are stand-alone sayings that don’t require context. But if you’d like to read the chapter anyway, click here.
Compare this verse with Psalm 34: 19: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all”.
It Did Not Fall
Also “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” Mathew 7: 24, 25.
These three passages all convey the same idea. The righteous are afflicted. They go through storms. They fall.
But their trials are not calamities or disasters because the outcome is good. (This is not true when the righteous do wicked things and don’t repent, but that’s another blog post).
Both the righteous and the wicked are afflicted. According to this proverb both the righteous and the wicked fall.
The difference is that the righteous “rise again”, but the wicked “stumble”.
Afflictions and Sorrows: The Righteous Falls 7 Times
Both the good and evil suffer. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous”. And “many are the sorrows of the wicked” Psalm 32: 10. The reason the righteous have afflictions and the wicked have sorrows is because is because “the Lord will deliver them [the righteous] out of them all [their afflictions]”.
The wicked have no such deliverance. Because they don’t put their trust in the Deliverer. That’s why their afflictions end up being sorrows. A sorrow is an affliction we are not delivered from.
Finally, we see this same principle at work in the parable of the foundations above. The wise man’s house was built on the rock. Because of this it weathered the storm and “it did not fall“.
The foolish man’s house, which was built on the sand and fell as a result of the storm. And “great was its fall” Mathew 7: 27.
Both the righteous and the wicked are afflicted. They both fall. They both must endure storms. The distinction does not lie in whether or not they endure trials. Because they both do.
The Outcome
The distinction lies in the outcome.
The righteous also have peace in their trials, while the wicked don’t. And the righteous are strengthened in their trials. It serves to make them “perfect and complete”(James 1: 4), while the wicked become weaker.
To read another post related to Meaning of the Righteous Falls 7 Times and Rise Again, see God’s Love has Nothing to Do with Us.