Do not rejoice when your enemy falls,And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
Lest the LORD see it, and it displease Him,And He turn away His wrath from him.
Proverbs 24:17–18 · NKJVPart of Do Not Gloat When Your Enemy Falls, Proverbs 24:17–18.
Quick answer
Your enemy going down is not an occasion for celebration, and the saying reaches past the celebration to the private gladness underneath it.
Read the whole unit
Read the whole unit
The first verse forbids two things at two depths. Rejoicing is public and stoppable; a heart being glad is neither, and the saying goes after it anyway. The received text carries a variant on whether the enemy is singular or plural, which the reading tradition settles as one enemy, and the singular is more uncomfortable: this is a specific person you can picture.
Verse 18 is the part people find difficult and it should not be softened. It does not say God will punish you. It says that if your gloating displeases Him, He may turn His wrath from him, from your enemy. The threatened outcome is that your enemy gets relief. That is a strange and precise piece of theology, and what it implies is that the fall of a wicked man was never staged for your satisfaction. God's dealings with your enemy are His business with your enemy, and your enjoyment is an intrusion that can change what He does.
Job puts the same instinct in the mouth of a righteous man defending himself: "If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me, or lifted myself up when evil found him" (31:29). Obadiah condemns a whole nation for gazing on a brother's disaster and rejoicing (12). The collection will go further still at 25:21–22, where the enemy who is hungry gets fed.
From this side of the cross
The saying assumes you have enemies and does not ask you to pretend otherwise. What it removes is the pleasure, and the ground for removing it is that the whole account has been settled somewhere you were not consulted. A person with nothing left to prove has no use for an enemy's bad day.
What this verse contributes
the two depths, and the fact that the interior one is commanded too.
The other half
The reason given is startling and worth sitting with: God might notice your pleasure and redirect His attention from your enemy to it.
Related: Proverbs 25:21–22 · Job 31:29 · Obadiah 12 · Proverbs 17:5
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.