Bible Synapse
Do the wicked live long, or are their days shortened?
Hard question · Psalms, wisdom and the prophets · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Job asks why the wicked live on, grow old and become mighty, with their children established around them.
Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes.
The Preacher has seen a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness.
All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
Though a sinner’s days be prolonged, it shall not be well with the wicked, nor shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow.
Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
“Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.”
But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but I will trust in thee.
“The fear of the Lord prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.”
The fear of the Lord prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.
In God’s sanctuary the psalmist understood the end of the wicked.
Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.
The objection
Job asks, “Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?” (Job 21:7), and Ecclesiastes has seen a sinner’s days prolonged. But Proverbs says “the years of the wicked shall be shortened” (Proverbs 10:27), and a psalm says that violent men “shall not live out half their days” (Psalm 55:23).
The answer
The Bible records both the rule and the exceptions, often in the same breath. Ecclesiastes 8:12–13 shows this most clearly: “Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God”, while of the wicked man, “neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow”. The Preacher has seen wicked men live long (7:15), and he still knows that their long life is only a shadow and that God’s judgment will overtake it.
Job 21 is Job’s reply to friends who insisted that the wicked always come to a quick and miserable end. He rightly points out that many do not, and at the end of the book God says that the friends had not spoken rightly (Job 42:7). Proverbs 10:27 states the general tendency: the fear of God tends to lengthen life, while violence and vice tend to cut it short. Psalm 55:23 is a prayer of trust about particular enemies, “bloody and deceitful men”. Psalm 73 brings the two together: the psalmist envied the prosperity of the wicked until he went into God’s sanctuary; “then understood I their end” (73:17).
From the classic commentators
remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always; for we have many instances of the great and long prosperity of those that are openly and avowedly wickedMatthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Job 21:7
or if they prolong their days in wickedness, as sometimes they do, Ecclesiastes 7:15; yet their days at longest are but a shadow which declines, and is quickly goneJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Ecclesiastes 8:13