Do the righteous prosper, or do they suffer?

Proverbs and many psalms speak as wisdom writing does: they state how God’s world normally works and where each path finally leads. They are true as patterns and true in the end, but they are not guarantees that every righteous person will escape every trouble. The Bible makes this plain itself. It includes the book of Job, whose friends wrongly treated such sayings as rules without exceptions, and the Psalter says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19). Psalm 37:25 is David’s honest testimony from a long life, and Proverbs 16:7 describes God’s usual way with those who please him, which Paul’s persecutions do not overturn.

The word in Proverbs 12:21 (’aven) means trouble or wickedness, and older commentators read the promise in the light of the whole Bible: no trouble will finally harm the righteous, because God turns it to their good. Hebrews 12:6 calls suffering the discipline of a loving Father; Jesus calls those persecuted for righteousness blessed (Matthew 5:10), and Isaiah says that even when the righteous perish they are “taken away from the evil to come” (Isaiah 57:1). What a proverb states as the rule, the gospel shows to be true at the end.