God Hates and Punishes Pride (1) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look.

The Lord of hosts has purposed it, to bring to dishonor the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.
Proverbs 6:16-17 NKJV; Isaiah 23:9 NKJV

God Hates and Punishes Pride (1)
Throughout Scripture our great God shows us that He hates pride and deals with it most severely. Some examples of this are:

In 1 Timothy 3:6 pride is referred to as the condemnation of the devil. Isaiah 14:12-17 and Ezekiel 28:12-19, which are addressed to the king of Tyre, in reality show us how Lucifer—the highest of God's created beings—through pride became Satan, God's enemy. Beautiful, wise, powerful, privileged, and self-confident, he rebelled against God, as we see in his "I wills." God pronounces judgment upon him, judgment that Revelation 20:10 shows us will yet be executed. The lake of fire and brimstone, the Lord Jesus tells us, was created for the devil and his angels (Mt. 25:41).

In Genesis 11, after the Flood, rather than obey God who told them to multiply and fill the earth, the people decided to build a city and a tower whose top would reach to heaven. They wanted to make a name for themselves lest they be scattered abroad. God saw what they were doing and confounded their language, spoiling their working together and scattering them over the earth.

God had the prophet Obadiah pronounce His judgment upon Israel's proud, cruel Edomite foes, descendants of Esau: "The pride of your heart has deceived you whose habitation is high; you who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?' Though you ascend as high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down'" (Obad. 1:3-4). Sela, the impregnable capital which Edom hewed for itself out of solid rock, lay hidden for centuries. Now called Petra, it is a tourist attraction.

-- Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.