Proverbs 24:29

Proverbs 24:29, in plain English

Don't nurse a grudge and plan revenge—even when someone genuinely hurt you—because you'd just be perpetuating the cycle instead of breaking it.

Why it's here

The writer addresses something in every human heart: the desire to even the score. Someone wrongs you, and your first instinct is to pay them back in kind. But he's saying that path leads nowhere—it just keeps the harm going.

Who's speaking

The wise teachers, calling their hearers toward something harder but better than revenge.

Where it sits in the story

This foreshadows what Jesus would teach about forgiveness and breaking cycles of harm. Throughout Scripture, you see God choosing not to repay us what we deserve, and He asks us to do the same for others.

The scholarly reading

Do not seek personal vengeance by saying you will repay injury for injury—resist the impulse to settle scores through retaliation.

Language and setting

The structure here—'do not say' (אַל־תֹּאמַר)—captures an internal resolve, not merely an external action. The contemplated revenge (כִּי־עָשִׂיתִי לוֹ כַּאֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה לִי) reflects the lex talionis mentality, the 'eye for an eye' principle. However, the sage restrains this impulse, recognizing that personal vendetta perpetuates cycles of violence and places the avenger in a posture of obsessive calculation. The phrase 'repay the man according to his work' uses שׁלם (šelem) in the Qal stem—to complete, to settle—suggesting that vengeance appears as a kind of completion but actually becomes its own corruption.

Voice

The wisdom instructor appealing to the better judgment of his student.

Significance

This tension between law (the permitted talionic principle) and wisdom (the restraint of vengeance) finds ultimate resolution in Christ's radical reframing of justice through forgiveness and non-retaliation (Matt. 5:38-39). The sage here stands between the law and the gospel, already sensing that personal revenge, even if legally sanctioned, corrupts the soul.

27Complete your outdoor work and prepare your field; after that, you may build your house.

28Do not testify against your neighbor without cause, and do not deceive with your lips.

29Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will repay the man according to his work.”

30I went past the field of a slacker and by the vineyard of a man lacking judgment.

31Thorns had grown up everywhere, thistles had covered the ground, and the stone wall was broken down.

Read all of Proverbs 24 — If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength. Wisdom builds a house; by understanding it is established.