Why Do the Wicked Prosper?

The question posed in the title is one every thinking believer has asked. The Old Testament is peppered with the question. (See Job 12:6; 21:7–15; Psalm 92:7; Malachi 3:15) The prophet Jeremiah who wrote from very personal experience with “the wicked” put it like this:

Why are the wicked so prosperous?

    Why are evil people so happy?

² You have planted them,

    and they have taken root and prospered.

Your name is on their lips,

    but you are far from their hearts.

³ But as for me, Lord, you know my heart.

    You see me and test my thoughts.

Drag these people away like sheep to be butchered!

    Set them aside to be slaughtered!

⁴ How long must this land mourn?

    Even the grass in the fields has withered.

The wild animals and birds have disappeared

    because of the evil in the land.

For the people have said,

    “The Lord doesn’t see what’s ahead for us!”

 

Jeremiah was warning Judah that they were about to suffer the same fate that had befallen Israel some 200 years earlier. They were going to be defeated and taken captive by the Babylonians in the near future, yet they continued in their wicked ways. They didn’t just ignore Jeremiah; they persecuted him harshly. It is not hard to understand why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.

In verse three the prophet slips into what is called an imprecatory attitude; he asks God to execute justice on the wicked; he wants the judgment God has promised to come quickly. In this context, it is not the wicked Babylonians Jeremiah wants slaughtered like sheep; it is his own countrymen – the wicked men of Judah. I understand that because, in a way, they are more culpable than the Babylonians; they have Moses’ law and the other prophets. They should know better, but their history by this point has proven that they are unwilling to follow God’s commands.

Jesus told a parable about the consequences for servants who were disobedient during their master’s absence. “And that slave who knew the will of his master and did not prepare or do according to his will will be given a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did things deserving blows will be given a light beating. And from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be demanded, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will ask him for even more.” The leaders in Judah in Jeremiah’s time were those “to whom much [had] been given.” Jeremiah was asking God to give them the beating they had coming.

When I look at Judah’s predicament, my first thought is that the Babylonians should be the ones getting slaughtered by God. In fact, according to Isaiah, it was God Himself who brought the Babylonians to power explicitly to chastise His people. Then, in an odd twist of fate, God deals the Babylonians their just deserts by bringing in the Persians to conquer them. Eventually it was Cyrus the Persian who released the Jews from their captivity to rebuild Jerusalem – something God had predicted over one hundred years before it happened.

This is all interesting history, and it is some of the best proof we have that God knows the end from the beginning, but I see a lesson for us in this. Jeremiah complains that the wicked are happy and prosperous even though God is, “far from their hearts.” It is no coincidence that the great enemy of the church in the book of Revelation is called Babylon. Nor is it surprising that God’s judgment falls on Babylon. Interpreters differ whether Babylon is a metaphor for apostate Jerusalem, judged and destroyed in 70 AD, or if it refers to some future entity (the resurrected Roman empire for example). Either way, God wins; justice triumphs; the church is victorious.

I still want to pray like Solomon did when dedicating the temple: “May you judge your servants, [by] condemning the wicked man [and] bringing what he has done on his own head.” When speaking of people who “suppress the [obvious] truth,” Paul said they would receive, “in themselves the penalty that was necessary for their error.” In Psalm 69 David asked that God would, “Pour out your indignation on [my adversaries], and let your burning anger overtake them.” If not for these passages and others like them, one could assume that this kind of vengeful attitude is too human for a believer, but apparently it is not wrong to pray that evil people get their due.

However, I cannot forget that God’s most severe judgment and Jesus harshest condemnation was always against those who should have known better. I fear what this means for people who claim to be Christian but preach a twisted gospel saying that gender is fluid or that God can bless same-sex marriage or that the virgin birth and Christ’s divinity don’t matter or that hell and judgment don’t exist. Even more disturbing is the condition of the Christian who sits in church every Sunday but is no different than his non-believing neighbors the rest of the week. I remember James’ judgment of people who hear the Word but don’t do anything in response.

The so-called prosperity gospel says that God’s blessing is evidenced by the believer’s physical prosperity. If that is true, how do we handle the question of the prosperity of the wicked? If there is anything to be learned from the lives of the Apostles and centuries of Christian martyrs, it is that worldly prosperity is not the measure of true faith. This is the answer to my title question: the wicked prosper only until God brings about their demise. By contrast, the righteous prosper through all eternity; we just define prosperity differently.

Related posts: Friendship With the World; Through the Bible in Seven Minutes; The Knowledge of Good and Evil