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PresumptuousnessAid to Bible Understanding
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counsel: “By presumptuousness one only causes a struggle, but with those consulting together there is wisdom.” (Prov. 13:10) Presumptuousness leads to disastrous results; modesty will save a person. The wise man says: “Has presumptuousness come? Then dishonor will come; but wisdom is with the modest ones.”—Prov. 11:2.
DISRESPECT FOR AND DEFIANCE OF GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
When a person acts presumptuously toward God he is showing disrespect for Jehovah’s sovereignty and Godship. Those claiming to be his servants and misrepresenting him are most reprehensible. Of the false prophets, Jehovah said: “The prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded him to speak . . . that prophet must die. . . . When the prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and the word does not occur or come true, . . . with presumptuousness the prophet spoke it.”—Deut. 18:20-22.
Also, disrespect for Jehovah is shown by disrespect for his appointed servants, which can be caused by presumptuousness. In Israel, difficult cases were brought to ‘the place Jehovah chose’ (which, from David’s day onward, was Jerusalem). Anyone who flouted the judgment rendered was to be put to death, for in standing up against God’s representatives he was acting in defiance of God. The law read: “In accordance with the law that they will point out to you, and according to the judicial decision that they will say to you, you should do. . . . And the man who will behave with presumptuousness in not listening to the priest who is standing to minister there to Jehovah your God or to the judge, that man must die; and you must clear out what is bad from Israel. And all the people will hear and become afraid, and they will not act presumptuously any more.” (Deut. 17:8-13; compare Numbers 15:30.) The apostle Peter speaks of some who show great disrespect for God and his anointed servants, describing them as “daring [from Greek tol·me·tesʹ, “presumptuous,” AV], self-willed, they do not tremble at glorious ones but speak abusively.” Such men, Peter says, “suffer destruction in their own course of destruction.”—2 Pet. 2:10, 12.
Presuming on fleshly connections can be a snare. John the Baptist discerned the Jews’ thinking when they approached him. He warned them: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘As a father we have Abraham.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” (Matt. 3:9) The Greek word here is doʹxe·te, from do·keʹo, which, basically, means “to think; to form an opinion (right or wrong).”
PRESUMPTUOUSNESS TO END
Ancient Babylon was a prototype of presumptuousness against God, for which God’s everlasting enmity was against her. The prophet Jeremiah said to her: “‘Look! I am against you, O Presumptuousness,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord. . . . Presumptuousness will certainly stumble and fall.” (Jer. 50:29, 31, 32) Symbolic Babylon the Great has proved to be God’s bitter and most presumptuous enemy on earth, making the inhabitants of the earth drunk “with the wine of her fornication” and responsible for “the blood of prophets and of holy ones and of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth.” For this she will suffer everlasting destruction. (Rev. 17:2, 5; 18:7, 8, 20, 24) This is in harmony with Jehovah’s promise to bring an end to all Babylonish presumptuousness: “I shall actually cause the pride of the presumptuous ones to cease, and the haughtiness of the tyrants I shall abase.”—Isa. 13:11.
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PrideAid to Bible Understanding
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PRIDE
Inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable feeling of superiority as to one’s talents, beauty, wealth, rank, and so forth; disdainful behavior or treatment; insolence or arrogance of demeanor; haughty bearing. Pride can, more rarely, have also the good connotation of a sense of delight or elation arising from some act or possession. Some synonyms of pride are egotism, arrogance, haughtiness.
Forms of the Hebrew root word, ga·ʼahʹ, translated “pride” may also be rendered “haughtiness,” “self-exaltation” and, in both good and bad senses, “eminence,” “eminent,” “exultant,” and with other English terms bearing the basic meaning of ga·ʼahʹ, namely, “to rise up, to be high or exalted.”
The Greek word kau·khaʹo·mai, meaning “to boast, to vaunt oneself, to glory, to exult, to rejoice,” likewise is used in both a good and a bad sense, the usage being determined by the context.
PRIDE DECEPTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE
The proud person may not recognize that he is proud and may attribute his actions to other causes in order to avoid facing the fact of his pride. One should examine himself and his motives thoroughly to determine whether he has this bad trait. The apostle Paul shows the need for the right motive, and the knowledge one should have of himself in this respect, when he says: “If I give all my belongings to feed others, and if I hand over my body, that I may boast [kau·kheʹso·mai], but do not have love, I am not profited at all.”—1 Cor. 13:3.
Pride should therefore be rooted out of one’s personality for one’s own benefit. More importantly, it must be done if a person hopes to please God. One must even come to hate it, for God’s Word says: “The fear of Jehovah means the hating of bad. Self-exaltation and pride and the bad way and the perverse mouth I have hated.”—Prov. 8:13.
The individual who does not get rid of his pride will suffer. “Pride is before a crash, and a haughty spirit before stumbling” (Prov. 16:18), and “the house of the self-exalted ones Jehovah will tear down.” (Prov. 15:25) There is an abundance of examples of the crash that proud individuals, dynasties and nations suffered.—Lev. 26:18, 19; 2 Chron. 26:16; Isa. 13:19; Jer. 13:9; Ezek. 30:6, 18; 32:12; Dan. 5:22, 23, 30.
Pride is deceptive. The apostle Paul counsels: “If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he is deceiving his own mind.” (Gal. 6:3) The proud person seems to be taking the way most beneficial or profitable to him, but he is leaving God out of account. (Compare Jeremiah 49:16; Revelation 3:17.) The Bible says: “Better is it to be lowly in spirit with the meek ones than to divide spoil with the self-exalted ones.”—Prov. 16:19.
BOASTING
The Greek word kau·khaʹo·mai, “to boast,” is used frequently in the sense of selfish pride. The Bible shows that no man has any ground for boasting in himself or his accomplishments. In the Christian congregation at Corinth, some were puffed up with pride in themselves or in other men, bringing about divisions in the congregation. They were thinking in a fleshly way, looking to men instead of to Christ. (1 Cor. 1:10-13; 3:3, 4) These men were not interested in the congregation’s spiritual welfare, but wanted to boast in outward appearances, not really wanting to help fellow Christians develop good hearts before God. (2 Cor. 5:12) Consequently, the apostle Paul severely reproved the congregation, showing that there was no room for them to be boasting in anyone but Jehovah God and what he had done for them. (1 Cor. 1:28, 29; 4:6, 7) The rule was: “He that boasts, let him boast in Jehovah.”—1 Cor. 1:31; 2 Cor. 10:17.
Jesus’ half-brother James went even farther in condemning those who boasted about certain worldly projects they were intending to carry out, telling them: “You take pride in your self-assuming brags. All such taking of pride is wicked.”—Jas. 4:13-16; compare Proverbs 27:1.
A GOOD CONNOTATION
The Hebrew word ga·ʼahʹ and the Greek word kau·khaʹo·mai can also mean a pride that is delight
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