The fear of Yahweh prolongs days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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The fear of Yahweh prolongs days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
The Torah, prophets, and Wisdom literature relentlessly command fear of YHWH — Deuteronomy 6:13, Ecclesiastes 12:13, Proverbs 9:10, Matthew 10:28, and Hebrews 10:31 all insist on it. But 1 John 4:18 says perfect love casts out fear, 2 Timothy 1:7 says God didn't give us a spirit of fear, and Romans 8:15 says believers haven't received a spirit of bondage to fear.
Critical scholarship: Genuinely disputed among scholars.
Law & ethics
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Job 21:7 stares straight at the problem of evil and admits that the wicked do, in fact, live long and grow mighty. Psalm 55:23, Proverbs 10:27, Proverbs 24:20, Ecclesiastes 8:13, Jeremiah 23:19, and Nahum 1:3 all insist on the opposite — the wicked get their days cut short and their lamp snuffed out.
Critical scholarship: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction.
Theology
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Proverbs 10:27 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/proverbs/10/27?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).