Commentary - Proverbs 10:25

Bird's-eye view

Proverbs 10:25 presents us with one of the central, recurring themes of Scripture: the great antithesis between the righteous and the wicked, and their respective destinies. This is not a quaint moralism suggesting that good people have better long-term prospects. This is a statement about the fundamental structure of reality as created and governed by a holy God. The verse uses the powerful imagery of a whirlwind, a sudden and violent storm, to represent the calamities of life and the final judgment of God. In the face of this divine tempest, the wicked, for all their bluster and apparent success, are revealed to be rootless and insubstantial. They are blown away like chaff. The righteous, in stark contrast, are shown to possess a foundation that is everlasting. Their stability is not a result of their own inherent strength, but is found in the object of their faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Wisdom of God and the Rock of our salvation.

This proverb, then, is a compact theology of two ways. There is the way of folly, which builds on the sand of self-will and rebellion, and there is the way of wisdom, which builds on the bedrock of God's revealed truth. The whirlwind comes for everyone, but it only destroys one kind of building. The verse forces us to ask the most important question: on what foundation are you building your life? When the storm hits, and it will, what will be left standing?

Outline

Context In Proverbs

This verse sits within the first major collection of Solomon's proverbs, which begins in chapter 10. The preceding nine chapters serve as an extended introduction, personifying wisdom and folly as two women calling out to the simple. Having laid that foundational choice, chapter 10 begins a series of sharp, contrasting couplets. Nearly every verse in this section, including ours, is a form of antithetical parallelism, placing a statement about the righteous or wise directly against a statement about the wicked or foolish. This literary structure relentlessly hammers home the reality that there are only two paths in life, two masters to serve, and two ultimate destinies. Proverbs 10:25 is a particularly vivid example of this pattern, contrasting the ultimate fates of those who walk these two paths. It distills the message of the entire book into two powerful lines: the way of wickedness leads to oblivion, while the way of righteousness leads to permanence.

Key Issues

The Two Ways

The Bible is not a book of polite suggestions. From the two trees in the Garden to the two gates in the Sermon on the Mount, from the sheep and the goats to the house on the rock and the house on the sand, Scripture consistently presents mankind with a radical choice. There is no middle ground, no third way. You are either in Adam or in Christ. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. You are either building for the fire or building for eternity. Proverbs is the great book of this antithesis applied to the nitty-gritty of daily life.

Proverbs 10:25 is a perfect distillation of this worldview. The world wants to believe in a spectrum of morality, where most people are somewhere in the muddled middle. But God's Word cuts through that sentimental nonsense like a sword. It draws a hard line. On one side are the wicked; on the other, the righteous. And the test that reveals which side you are on is the whirlwind. The storm does not create the foundation; it reveals it. Or, in the case of the wicked, it reveals the lack of one.

Verse by Verse Commentary

25a When the whirlwind passes, the wicked is no more...

The verse begins with the storm. The whirlwind is a common biblical metaphor for sudden, overwhelming, and divine judgment. It is not a random weather event. This is the holy and just visitation of God. It can refer to historical calamities, like the Babylonian invasion, or personal tragedies that upend a person's life. Ultimately, it points to the final judgment, the great and terrible day of the Lord. When this whirlwind comes, the wicked man is simply gone. He is no more. This does not mean he is annihilated, but rather that his place, his influence, his name, and his entire life's project are utterly obliterated from the land of the living. He was a puff of smoke, a chasing after the wind. For all his strutting and scheming, when the reality of God's power arrives, he vanishes. He has no substance, no root, no anchor. The storm passes, and the place where he stood is empty.

25b But the righteous has an everlasting foundation.

The contrast is absolute. The storm that obliterates the wicked man is the same storm that the righteous man endures. The difference is not in the storm, but in the foundation. The righteous man is not spared the whirlwind, but he survives it. He remains. Why? Because he is built on something that the storm cannot move. He has an everlasting foundation. This is not a foundation of his own making. His righteousness is not the foundation; it is the result of being on the foundation. The foundation is the Lord Himself. As Paul says, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 3:11). The righteous man is the one who, by faith, has built his life on the rock of Christ. He trusts in God's promises, submits to God's law, and rests in God's grace. Therefore, when the winds of judgment howl and the rains of affliction beat down, his house stands. It stands not because the man is so strong, but because his foundation is everlasting, as eternal as God Himself.

Application

This proverb is a call to radical self-examination. We are all building a life of some kind, and this verse tells us there are only two possible outcomes. You are either a wicked man building on sand, or a righteous man building on the rock. The whirlwind is coming for all of us. The trials of this life, the certainty of death, and the final judgment are not hypotheticals. They are fixed appointments.

The application, therefore, is not to try harder to be righteous in your own strength. That is just another way of arranging the sand into a more impressive-looking sandcastle. The application is to abandon your own building project entirely and flee to the foundation that God has provided. That foundation is Christ. To be righteous in the biblical sense is to be declared righteous by God through faith in the finished work of His Son. It is to confess that you are a wicked man by nature, deserving of the whirlwind, and to cling to the only one who can make you stand in the storm.

Once you are on that foundation, then you can begin to build. You build with the gold, silver, and precious stones of obedience, good works, and faithfulness, all done in the power of the Spirit. But never forget that the strength is not in your building materials; it is in the foundation underneath. The wicked man trusts in himself, and is blown away. The righteous man trusts in Christ, and has an everlasting foundation.