when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you.
Parallel translations
- KJV When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
- BSB when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you.
- NKJV When your terror comes like a storm, And your destruction comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you.
- NASB When your dread comes like a storm And your disaster comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you.
- NLT when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster engulfs you like a cyclone, and anguish and distress overwhelm you.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Calamity will sweep over the scornful like a storm and whirlwind. It matters because it pictures judgment as sudden, overwhelming, and inescapable.
Overview
The imagery of storm and whirlwind conveys disaster that cannot be resisted once it comes. Distress and anguish will overtake those who refused wisdom while there was opportunity. The verse warns that delay in repentance leaves one defenseless when judgment finally arrives.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Prov 3:25–26Don’t be afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it comes:
- Prov 10:24–25What the wicked fear, will overtake them, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.
- Rom 2:9oppression and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
- Ps 69:22–28Let their table before them become a snare. May it become a retribution and a trap.
- 1 Th 5:3For when they are saying, “Peace and safety,” then sudden destruction will come on them, like birth pains on a pregnant woman; and they will in no way escape.
- Ps 58:9Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike.
- Luke 21:34–35“So be careful, or your hearts will be loaded down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day will come on you suddenly.
- Nah 1:3Yahweh is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Yahweh has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
- Luke 21:23–26Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who nurse infants in those days! For there will be great distress in the land, and wrath to this people.
- Isa 17:13The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters: but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far off, and will be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm.
- Rev 6:15–17The kings of the earth, the princes, the commanding officers, the rich, the strong, and every slave and free person, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 1:27 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.