Proverbs 27.4
“Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?”
Emotion is powerful, and it is critical that you manage your emotions and not let your emotions manage you.
Emotions affect whether you pay attention or are distracted, if you remember or forget. They influence whether you make good decisions or bad ones, stick with your choices or change your mind. How you feel also impacts your physical health and your ability to build and maintain healthy relationships.
We all need to develop the discernment and discipline to recognize, understand, and regulate our emotions in order to be effective at home and in the workplace.
The emotions you feed will grow, which is why self-awareness and self-discipline are essential skills. This is sometimes called “emotional intelligence” (EQ), and it is a discipline and skill that everyone needs. Indeed, the case can be made the EQ is more important than IQ.
Forbes magazine recently wrote: “In the workplace, EQ trumps IQ every day of the week. The #1 way professionals with high IQs destroy their careers is by having low EQ.”
This verse speaks to three disruptive emotions that can cause significant problems in your life: anger, wrath, and jealousy.
While anger is bad, envy is worse. A hot temper is destructive for a short time, but jealousy feeds enduring bitterness. People get twisted by anger, but envy sees everything with a poisoned view. Wrath can control emotions for a time, but envy can eat away your soul for a lifetime.
Envy is the hostile and malicious feeling of jealous resentment toward another person for something they have but you want. Anger tends to dissipate over time, but envy tends to cling tenaciously … it is always there to remind you that someone has something you want. It fuels resentment.
Most of the time, envy is hidden out of sight, so people are often unaware of its simmering poison in another’s heart.
A dark example of jealousy was King Saul’s envy with respect to David. Despite his resentment toward him, David was perfect for King Saul. He soothed him with his harp; he was his son’s best friend; he married his daughter; he fought his battles for him; Israel respected him; he was exceeding wise; he was very loyal; and the Lord was with David. But Saul envied Israel’s love for David, and repeatedly tried to kill him.
Such is the malignant impact of jealousy, and the message of this proverb: “Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?”
