Proverbs 14:32

his wickedness Lit. his evil; which may mean either, with R.V. text, the evil which he does, his evil-doing, or, with R.V. marg., the evil which he suffers, his calamity. The latter meaning preserves best the parallelism: when calamity overtakes the wicked it crushes him utterly (comp. Psalms 36:12), but even in his last extremity of death the righteous hath hope.

hope in his death which implies a belief in a future state.

The same vivid contrast meets us in a more expanded form in Psalms 73. The "prosperity of the wicked," in contrast to the hard lot of the righteous, had been the stumbling-block of the writer of the Psalm (Psalms 73:1). It was by considering "the end" both of the one and of the other, that his faith was re-established. The wicked are thrust down in their calamity, "How are they become a desolation in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors" (Proverbs 14:19): The righteous hath hope in his death, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory" (Proverbs 14:24). Comp. Psalms 49:14-15. It is to be noticed that in both these Psalms (Psalms 73:24; Psalms 49:15) the same word, take, or receive, is used to express the hope of the Psalmist, as that by which the translation of Enoch is described, God took him(Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5).

The LXX. read, "but he that trusteth in his own integrity is righteous," ὁ δὲ πεποιθὼς τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ὁσιότητι δίκαιος; on which Lange observes, "may not this divergent reading owe its origin to the endeavour to gain an antithesis as exact as possible to the -in his wickedness" of the first clause?"