When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
Parallel translations
- WEB when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you.
- BSB when your dread comes like a storm, and your destruction like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish overwhelm you.
- ESV when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon 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 quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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 3:25–26Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh.
- Prov 10:24–25The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.
- Rom 2:9Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
- Ps 69:22–28Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.
- 1 Th 5:3For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
- Ps 58:9Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
- Luke 21:34–35And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
- Nah 1:3The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
- Luke 21:23–26But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.
- Isa 17:13The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
- Rev 6:15–17And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
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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.