Proverbs 10:24

The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(24) The fear of the wicked—i.e., that of which he is afraid. (Comp. Isaiah 66:4; Hebrews 10:27.)

The desire of the righteous shall be granted.—For they submit their will to the will of God, and pray for what He sees best for them, which accordingly He grants; moreover, the Holy Spirit also aids them, making intercession for them “according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27).

Benson Commentary

Proverbs 10:24-25. The fear of the wicked — The evil which he feared, or hath cause to fear; it shall come upon him — Notwithstanding his cunning contrivances, and various efforts to prevent it. Indeed “wicked men frequently draw upon themselves what they feared, by the very means whereby they studied to avoid it; a remarkable example whereof, Bochart observes, we have in the builders of the tower of Babel: the very remedy of the evil they wished to avoid leading them directly to it.” And it may be added, a much more remarkable one we have in the Jews, who crucified Christ. For they put him to death lest the Romans should come and take away their place (their temple) and nation: see John 11:48-53 : and their putting him to death was the very thing which, in the just judgment of God, brought the Roman armies upon them to their utter destruction as a nation. But the desire of the righteous shall be granted — God will not only prevent the mischiefs which they fear, but will grant them the good things which they desire. As the whirlwind passeth — Which is suddenly gone, though with great noise and violence; so is the wicked no more —

His power and felicity are lost in an instant; but the righteous is — Or hath, an everlasting, &c. — His hope and happiness are built upon a sure and immoveable foundation.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:22. That wealth which is truly desirable, has no vexation of spirit in the enjoyment; no grief for the loss; no guilt by the abuse of it. What comes from the love of God, has the grace of God for its companion. 23. Only foolish and wicked men divert themselves with doing harm to others, or tempting to sin. 24. The largest desire of eternal blessings the righteous can form, will be granted. 25. The course of prosperous sinners is like a whirlwind, which soon spends itself, and is gone. 26. As vinegar sets the teeth on edge, and as the smoke causes the eyes to smart, so the sluggard vexes his employer. 27,28. What man is he that loves life? Let him fear God, and that will secure to him life enough in this world, and eternal life in the other.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The fear - i. e., The thing feared (compare the marginal reference).

Shall be granted - Or, He (Yahweh) giveth the desire of the righteous.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24. it—the very thing. The wicked get dreaded evil; the righteous, desired good.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The fear; the evils which he feareth, or hath cause to fear, as fear is oft taken.

Shall be granted; God will not only prevent the mischiefs which they fear, but grant them the good things which they desire.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him,.... What he dreads in his own mind will be his unhappy case, sooner or later it comes upon him; his fear of distresses, calamities, and judgments in this life, and of eternal wrath and vengeance hereafter; for the most profligate and abandoned wretches, the greatest atheists, who endeavour to work themselves up to a disbelief of a God and a future state, have at times their frights and fears about these things; and as are their fears of God, so will his wrath be, Psalm 90:11. Jarchi illustrates this in the instance of the builders of Babel, who were afraid of being scattered upon the face of the earth, which thing feared came upon them through and for their building of the tower; and so it sometimes is, that the very thing which men fear comes upon them by the means which they take to prevent it; so the Jews were afraid that if their people believed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Romans would come and seize their city and nation, and therefore endeavoured to persuade them to reject him; for which rejection of him the thing they feared came upon them;

but the desire of the righteous shall be granted; or "he shall give" (s); that is, God shall give it; who has it in his hands or power to give it, as Jarchi's note is: what a righteous man desires from right principles, and with right views; what is for his own good and the glory of God; what he asks in faith, and with submission to the divine will, and is according to it, is sooner or later, in God's own time and way, granted unto him: particularly his desires after righteousness; after the righteousness of Christ, and to be found alone in that, living and dying; after holiness of heart and life, that he might be cleansed and kept from sin, and preserved to the coming of Christ; after more grace, an increase of it, and fresh supplies from Christ; after more communion with God and Christ, and conformity to them; after glory and happiness, and a being with them to all eternity. Some understand this of the righteous man's desire upon the wicked; that his fear might come upon him, and the glory of divine justice appear in his swift and sudden destruction; as expressed in Proverbs 10:25; so Aben Ezra.

(s) "dabit", Pagninus, Montanus, Baynus; "justis dat quod cupiunt", Tigurine version; "dabit Deus", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis; "dat Deus", Mercerus, Gejerus.

Geneva Study Bible

The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 24. - This verse is connected in thought with the preceding. The wicked, though he lightly carries on his evil practices, is troubled with the thought of the retribution which awaits him, and that which he fears shall come upon him (Proverbs 1:26; Job 3:25; Isaiah 66:4); Septuagint, "The wicked is involved in destruction." The desire of the righteous. The righteous will desire only that which is in agreement with God's will, and this God grants, if not in this world, certainly in the life to come. The LXX. has, "The desire of the just is acceptable." Proverbs 10:24

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

24 That of which the godless is afraid cometh upon him,

     And what the righteous desires is granted to him.

The formation of the clause 24a is like the similar proverb, Proverbs 11:27; the subject-idea has there its expression in the genitival annexum, of which Genesis 9:6 furnishes the first example; in this passage before us it stands at the beginning, and is, as in Proverbs 10:22, emphatically repeated with היא. מגורה, properly the turning oneself away, hence shrinking back in terror; here, as Isaiah 66:4, of the object of fear, parallel to תּאוה, wishing, of the object of the wish. In 24b Ewald renders יתּן as adj. from יתן (whence איתן ecne), after the form פּקּח, and translates: yet to the righteous desire is always green. But whether יתּן is probably formed from יתן, and not from נתן, is a question in Proverbs 12:12, but not here, where wishing and giving (fulfilling) are naturally correlata. Hitzig corrects יתּן, and certainly the supplying of 'ה is as little appropriate here as at Proverbs 13:21. Also a "one gives" is scarcely intended (according to which the Targ., Syr., and Jerome translate passively), in which case the Jewish interpreters are wont to explain יתן, scil. הנותן; for if the poet thought of יתן fo with a personal subject, why did he not rescue it from the dimness of such vague generality? Thus, then, יתן is, with Bttcher, to be interpreted as impersonal, like Proverbs 13:10; Job 37:10, and perhaps also Genesis 38:28 (Ewald, 295a): what the righteous wish, that there is, i.e., it becomes actual, is fulfilled. In this we have not directly and exclusively to think of the destiny at which the godless are afraid (Hebrews 10:27), and toward which the desire of the righteous goes forth; but the clause has also truth which is realized in this world: just that which they greatly fear, e.g., sickness, bankruptcy, the loss of reputation, comes upon the godless; on the contrary that which the righteous wish realizes itself, because their wish, in its intention, and kind, and content, stands in harmony with the order of the moral world.