Pride Goes before a Fall

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

-- Proverbs 16: 18-19 (KJV)

Though one of the creakiest pieces of ancient wisdom, the idea that "pride goes before a fall" (an abridgment of Proverbs 16: 18) often bears repeating. Certain high flyers of the 1980s, for example, might profitably have brushed up their Bible.

We tend to think pride is dangerous because it plays with the mind, leading us to overreach ourselves or to offend the wrong people. But the author of Proverbs is less interested in psychology or ethics than in power, namely God's. Our comparative insignificance is something we forget at our peril, because "Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord" (verse 5), who tends to the jealous side.

Such notions were also shared by the Greeks, whose goddess Nemesis took care of mortals who thought themselves too godlike. But the Greek notion of cosmic balance was alien to Hebrew thought, just as Hebrew ideas of religious duty and sin were alien to the Greeks. We all know who won the contest for the heart of Western ethics.

The phrasing "pride goeth before destruction" is perhaps a bit confusing; what "goeth before" means here is "leads to" ("go" was a much more versatile verb in the Renaissance than it is now). Yet "goeth" does suggest that pride is a force capable of moving on its own and of leading us by the hand to our doom, which is both more vivid and truer to Hebrew psychology.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!