---
title: Proverbs 16:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/proverbs-16-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/proverbs-16-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Proverbs 16:4
testament: OT
section: Poetry
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Proverbs 16:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> The LORD has made everything for His purpose— even the wicked for the day of disaster.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "Jehovah has made everything work for his purpose, Even the wicked for the day of disaster."

## JW Usage

Read as Jehovah ensuring that everything ultimately serves his purpose, including the eventual judgment of the wicked. The Watchtower reads the second line as saying that the wicked have made themselves fit for the day of disaster, not that Jehovah made them for it — consistent with its rejection of individual predestination.

## Protestant Usage

This is a verse to raise carefully, and to raise late. Hebrew proverbs are compressed and this one is genuinely difficult; translations differ over whether the wicked are made for the day of disaster or made to serve a purpose that includes it. Do not build a case on the ambiguity, and say so openly — it buys credibility for the points that are not ambiguous. What the verse does establish plainly is scope: everything serves Jehovah's purpose. Nothing falls outside it, including the day of disaster. That much is enough for the question worth asking. The Watchtower teaches that Jehovah foreknew the entire course of the rebellion, could have ended it, and chose to let it run because doing so served his purpose. If everything works for his purpose, and he knew and permitted with that purpose in view, then "permission" is carrying the weight of a decision. The clearer texts for this are Acts 4:27-28 and Genesis 50:20, where the human act and the divine intention are named in one sentence. Compare Genesis 50:20, Acts 4:27, Romans 9:22.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Permitted Issue Is Still a Decree](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/watchtower-determinism-author-of-evil.md) — When Watchtower theodicy reinvents the predestination it denies [Authority]