Bible Synapse
Do the wicked prosper, or does evil slay them?
Hard question · Psalms, wisdom and the prophets · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Job: “The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure”.
The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.
Asaph envied the prosperity of the wicked: they are not in trouble like other men, and have more than heart could wish.
For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.
The problem was too painful for him “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end”.
When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; 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.
Jeremiah: “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?”
Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
“Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.”
Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.
The objection
Job, Asaph and Jeremiah all complain that the wicked prosper and live at ease. Yet another psalm says flatly that “Evil shall slay the wicked”. Which is it?
The answer
Both are true, at different points in time, and Psalm 73 shows how they fit. Asaph begins by envying the wicked, “when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (73:3). He tried to make sense of it, and it was too painful for him, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end” (73:16-17). The word for ‘end’ (acharit) means what comes afterwards, the outcome. Their prosperity was real but brief: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places” (73:18). Psalm 37 says the same: “I have seen the wicked in great power”, “Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not” (37:35-36). Ecclesiastes puts both halves in one sentence: a sinner may do evil a hundred times and live long, “yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God” (8:12-13).
Psalm 34:21 speaks of that outcome. It says that a wicked man’s own evil will in the end destroy him, not that every wicked person suffers at once. Job and Jeremiah are not denying this. They are bringing an honest complaint to God in prayer, and Jeremiah begins it with “Righteous art thou, O Lord” (12:1). In Job’s case the complaint answers his friends, who insisted that the wicked always suffer quickly and so Job must be wicked. The book itself rejects their view (Job 42:7). The Bible does not hide the hard fact that the wicked often prosper, but it sets it against the judgement to come.
From the classic commentators
he understood the wretched end of wicked people, which he plainly foresaw to be such that even in the height of their prosperity they were rather to be pitied than envied, for they were but ripening for ruin.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Psalm 73 (1706–1721)