Proverbs 24:17 Meaning Don’t Rejoice When Your Enemy Falls

The one called an enemy is only the mind's own guilt seen in a mirror, a figure fear has painted onto another face. To be glad at his fall is to celebrate the very separation that keeps the mind in pain, because his defeat seems to prove that attack was justified and that the two were truly divided.

But there are not two minds here, only one dreaming it is split, and gladness at another's stumble is guilt reassuring itself. The invitation is to see the enemy as innocent, for in overlooking his fall the mind releases the accusation it was holding against itself.

Enemy: the mind's own projected guilt wearing another's face, the figure fear casts outward so it can attack what is really itself

The glee a person feels at an enemy's fall says more about his own wound than about the enemy. A self-image sure of its own worth does not need someone else to stumble in order to feel tall. The gladness exposes a lack. When the heart leaps at another's collapse, it is feeding on something starved inside.

The man who props himself up on rivals sinking has borrowed his footing from their failure. His good feeling lasts only as long as they stay down. A person at ease with himself watches an opponent fall and feels no lift from it, because his standing never depended on that opponent in the first place.