Bible verses about failure

Seven times, and no “a day”

Read Proverbs 24:16 with the verse before it, as the list above prints it, and the falling changes. Verse 15 is spoken to a wicked man lying in wait against a righteous man’s home, and verse 16 is the reason he will not succeed. The falls are things done to the righteous man. Most of the older commentators read it that way. Ellicott: “falls into trouble (not sin, as is often supposed)”. Barnes: “not into sin, but into calamities”. Poole weighs both and says “rather” calamities (commentaries on Proverbs 24:16). The Cambridge Bible goes furthest, saying the Hebrew word “is never used of moral lapse”. The Pulpit Commentary is more careful, saying only that it “seems not to be used” that way, and it admits that preachers “have made much use of this text” in the sense of sin. Gill keeps both readings. So if you have heard the verse as a promise about getting over your sins, that reading is old and much used. It is just not the one the context points to.

The verb is naphal (5307), the ordinary Hebrew word for falling, and rises up is qum (6965) (interlinear). Seven times means often: Ellicott says “frequently”, and Barnes calls it “a certain for an uncertain number”. The popular version, a righteous man falls seven times a day, adds two words. The Pulpit Commentary notes that in die, “a day”, is often added, and that the words “occur in some manuscripts, but are not in the original”. Neither of the translations above has them.

One more thing the toggles show. The King James says fall twice in verse 16, once for the righteous man and once for the wicked, and the Hebrew has two verbs: naphal for the righteous and kashal (3782), to stumble, for the wicked. The modern rendering keeps them apart, and its overthrown by calamity is the Revised Version’s wording, which the Cambridge Bible prefers. Cambridge puts the contrast this way: the righteous man rises seven times, and the wicked may be “utterly crushed” by a single calamity.

Fall, then rise, in the same breath

Micah 7:8 puts the same two verbs side by side with nothing between them, naphalti qamti, both in the perfect tense (interlinear). Barnes gives it literally as “when I have fallen, I have arisen”, and adds, “To fall and to arise is one” (commentaries on Micah 7:8). The speaker is Jerusalem, or the people, in defeat, and the Hebrew word for the enemy is feminine, which Ellicott says is “used of enemies collectively”. The Cambridge Bible again: the falling is “not that of sin, but of calamity”.

Amos uses the same pair the other way round, in a lament for Israel:

“The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; there is no one to raise her up.”Amos 5:2 · World English Bible

Fallen and not rising, with the same two verbs, and then qum once more: there is no one to raise her up (interlinear). Ecclesiastes puts the pair to the same use, with the lifting done by someone else: woe to him who is alone when he falls, and doesn’t have another to lift him up (Ecclesiastes 4:10, interlinear; the whole passage is on our friendship page). Psalm 145:14, in the list, says who does the lifting when no one else is there: The LORD upholds all who fall. In Hebrew, all who fall is a participle: those who are falling.

Though he fall: where the two translations disagree

Psalm 37:24 is where the toggles above split most. The King James: Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down. The modern rendering: Though he stumble, he shall not fall. One translation has him fall and the other says he does not. Under the King James’s fall and the modern stumble is naphal again. The second verb is tul (2904), which Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses “hurl, cast” (interlinear). So the modern fall is not the falling verb at all. It means being thrown down, and the Cambridge Bible renders it “shall not lie prostrate”. This is a translation choice, not a question about the Hebrew. The King James translates naphal as fall here, as it does in Proverbs and Micah. The modern rendering keeps fall for the second verb.

Barnes reads the first half in the plainest terms of anyone: “though he is sometimes disappointed; though he is not always successful”. The word, he says, “does not refer to his falling into ‘sin,’ but into misfortune” (commentaries on Psalm 37:24).

In Hebrew, a promise that fails has fallen

Joshua 21:45, in the list, says of everything God had promised Israel: There failed not ought of any good thing. The Hebrew for failed is naphal, the falling verb from Proverbs 24:16, with a not in front of it: lo naphal, not a word fell (interlinear). The sentence comes back twice more. Joshua says it twice in one verse of his farewell (Joshua 23:14), and Solomon says it at the dedication of the temple: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise (1 Kings 8:56, interlinear). Both our translations say failed every time, so the toggles cannot show you the falling. One verse in Samuel keeps the picture in English:

Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.1 Samuel 3:19 · World English Bible

That is naphal once more, in its causative form (interlinear). So on this page one Hebrew verb does two jobs. People fall, seven times in Proverbs, and get up. The words God has spoken do not fall at all. Joshua’s farewell is honest about what that covers: the verse after 23:14 applies the same certainty to the warnings (Joshua 23:15).

Simon, Simon

Luke 22:31-32 is said at the Last Supper, hours before Peter denies knowing Jesus. In the King James the pronouns change: Satan hath desired to have you, then I have prayed for thee. The first is plural and the second singular, which the modern rendering shows another way, with all of you. Ellicott: “The word for ‘you’ is plural.” Satan asked for all of them, and Jesus says he prayed for Peter (commentaries on Luke 22:31).

What he prayed for is the part worth reading slowly. He did not pray that Peter would not fall, and that night Peter did. He prayed that thy faith fail not. Bengel noticed the difference: “He does not say, that thou mightest not be sifted” (commentaries on Luke 22:32). The verb is ekleipo (1587), which Thayer glosses “to fail; i. e. to leave off, cease, stop”. English gets eclipse from it. It occurs four times in the New Testament, and one of the others is Hebrews 1:12, where God’s years shall not fail. Ellicott does not soften what happened: “In one sense ‘faith’ did ‘fail’ when the disciple denied his Lord; but repentance came after it.”

The sentence does not stop at the failure. When thou art converted is not the technical word it sounds like. The Cambridge Bible renders it “when thou hast turned again”, which is the modern wording too. Then comes the instruction: strengthen thy brethren in the King James, establish your brothers in the modern. Jesus gave the man about to fail most publicly a job for afterwards, before any of it had happened. Peter’s restoration in John 21 is on our regret page, and the moment he remembered and wept is on betrayal.

The word Peter kept

The verb in strengthen thy brethren is sterizo (4741), which Strong’s gives as “to set fast”, and Peter uses it himself twice: as the second of four verbs in 1 Peter 5:10, in the list, and in established in the present truth in 2 Peter 1:12 (1 Peter 5:10 and 2 Peter 1:12 interlinears). Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible both point it out, and Cambridge says the word “sank into his heart”.

Here the modern rendering is the one that lets you see it. It says establish in Luke 22:32 and in 1 Peter 5:10, and established in 2 Peter 1:12: one Greek word, one English word, three times. The King James says strengthen, then stablish, then established, and its strengthen in 1 Peter 5:10 is a different verb, sthenoo (4599). So in the older translation the word that looks shared is not, and the word that is shared does not look it. The first of the four verbs, perfect, is katartizo, the net-mending word our temptation page found in Galatians 6:1.

The race is not to the swift

Ecclesiastes 9:11 is the verse for a failure that was not a verdict on you. The fastest runner does not always win, the wise do not always eat, the skilled do not always find favour, but time and chance happen to them all. The Cambridge Bible reads it the way someone who has just failed needs it read: “The course of the world witnesses many apparent failures even where men fulfil the apparent conditions of success.” The Pulpit Commentary heads off the obvious comparison, “One is reminded of the fable of the hare and tortoise; but Koheleth’s meaning is different”, and says what it is: a man “well equipped for his work” who “uses all possible exertions” still “may incur failure” (commentaries on Ecclesiastes 9:11).

The word for chance is pega (6294), which Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses “occurrence, chance”, and it occurs twice in the Hebrew Bible. Ellicott notes the other: 1 Kings 5:4, where Solomon, at peace, says there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent. Barnes calls it “that which comes to us from without”. The verse is not saying effort is pointless; the one before it says Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. It is saying effort does not settle the result.

George Orwell used this verse in 1946 to show what bad modern prose does to good English. In “Politics and the English Language” he rewrote it as “Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.” He counted 49 words and 60 syllables in the original against 38 words and 90 syllables in his version, and said the original had only one phrase that could be called vague: “time and chance” (the essay at the Orwell Foundation). Count the King James above and it is 49. The phrase he called vague is the one built on the rare word.

The second time

Jonah was sent to Nineveh and took a ship the other way. This was the first call:

Now the LORD’s word came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.”Jonah 1:1-2 · World English Bible

Jonah 3:1-2, in the list, is the second, and it opens the same way. The modern rendering prints the same seven words both times, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and the Hebrew under them is identical (1:2 and 3:2 interlinears). It does not mention the ship, the storm or the fish. The Pulpit Commentary: “He is forgiven and restored to his office, and the commission formerly given is renewed.” The Cambridge Bible makes the comparison this page keeps coming back to: “Like St Peter (John 21:15-17), Jonah is not only forgiven, but restored to his office” (commentaries on Jonah 3:1).

When it went wrong on your watch

1 Samuel 30:6 is a leader’s failure. David and his men came back to Ziklag to find it burnt and their families carried off (1 Samuel 30:1-3), and the men talked of stoning him. The verb in David encouraged himself in the LORD his God, which the modern rendering gives as strengthened himself, is chazaq (2388) in its reflexive form (interlinear). That is the be strong of Joshua 1:9, which our encouragement page is built on. There it is an order given to Joshua. Here nobody gives the order; David strengthens himself while his men are still talking about stones.

What he did next is in verse 8: he asked. David enquired of the LORD before he went after the raiders, and the answer doubles two of its verbs, the way Hebrew leans on a word. The King James renders the doubling as surely overtake and without fail recover all (interlinear). Proverbs 15:22, in the list, states the general rule: Where there is no counsel, plans fail. The King James says purposes are disappointed, one of only three times it uses that word; our disappointment page has the other two.

He knows how we are made

Psalm 103:14 is for the part of failing that is just being human. He knows how we are made, says the modern rendering, and the King James says he knoweth our frame. Frame is yetser (3336), which Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses “form, framing” and uses first of pottery made by a potter. The Cambridge Bible says the verse “is an allusion to Genesis 2:7”, where the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and both of that verse’s words are here: the forming and the dust (Psalm 103:14 and Genesis 2:7 interlinears). Barnes says we are “so easily broken down by a pressure of trial”, and that the psalm gives this as “a reason why he pities us” (commentaries on Psalm 103:14).

What this page is not

• It is not the page for having done wrong. Most of the falls on this page are the kind that happen to you. If what you are carrying is something you did, regret starts there.
• It is not the page for stopping. If you are thinking of walking away from something unfinished, that is giving up. Disappointment is for an outcome you hoped for, and insecurity is for not feeling equal to something before you start.
• It is not the page for a weakness that will not lift. Paul asked three times for something to be taken away and was told no. That is our page on 2 Corinthians 12:9.
• It is not help in a crisis. If a failure has turned into not wanting to be here, call or text 988 in the US (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or your local emergency number anywhere else.