Mishlei 16:18 - Pride Goeth Before the Fall

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Artwork: Tragic Arrogance, by Winona Nelson

Mishlei 16:18 - Pride Goeth Before the Fall

I am 99% certain that the English proverb "pride goeth before the fall" comes from a pasuk in Mishlei. In this post we will examine the actual pasuk, and I will present an idea from one of my students (with my own embellishments).

משלי טז:יח

לִפְנֵי שֶׁבֶר גָּאוֹן וְלִפְנֵי כִשָּׁלוֹן גֹּבַהּ רוּחַ:

Mishlei 16:18

Arrogance comes before breaking, and haughtiness comes before stumbling.

The questions here are pretty straightforward: 

1. What is the pasuk teaching us about arrogance? It can't just be saying that arrogant people make mistakes; that's too simple of an idea for Mishlei. 
2. Why does the pasuk seemingly repeat itself with only slight changes in the wording? Specifically, what is the differences between "gaon" ("arrogance") and "govah ruach" ("haughtiness"), and between "shever" (breaking) and kishalon ("stumbling")? Note: Some meforshim, like Metzudas David and Ralbag, might answer questions like this by saying: "Shlomo just repeated himself using different words." But my approach to Mishlei is to try finding a reason for the repetition, and only make recourse to the "same idea, different words" answer as a last-ditch resort.
3. Why are the two halves of the pasuk arranged in this order? "Breaking" seems like a stronger term than "stumbling." To place this term first is odd, from a rhetorical standpoint. For example, if you want to warn someone, you don't say, "You might DIE or even TRIP!" but rather "You might TRIP or even DIE!"

[If you're playing along at home, feel free to think at this point before reading on.]

As is my standard practice, I will now summarize the main idea in four (long) sentences:

The baal gaivah (egotistical person) is bound to fail, due to his overestimation of his own greatness (gaon) and his egocentric view of his place in reality (govah ruach); our pasuk underscores the inevitability of his fate by saying: “A comes before B, and C comes before D” – as if to say that this is a natural and unavoidable sequence of events. 

The downfall of the baal gaivah is twofold: (1) he will experience the harmful consequences of his poor decision-making (“stumbling”), and (2) he will suffer a severe emotional blow to his ego when he is forced to confront the fact that he is not as great as he would like to believe (“breaking”); since this blow to his ego will cause him more pain than the actual consequences of his decisions, the pasuk puts “breaking” before “stumbling.” 

This pasuk was not written for the baal gaivah, since he is unlikely to take it to heart; moreover, even if the baal gaivah experiences these effects, he is likely to continue in his arrogant and haughty ways, since he will not be willing to face the fact that he has a flaw which needs to be corrected. 

This pasuk was intended for those on the Mishleic spectrum who do not suffer from gaivah as a dominant character trait, but who - like all human beings - are prone to bouts of gaivah in varying degrees from time to time; this pasuk will help these individuals to vigilantly guard themselves against the insidious and disastrous effects of arrogance and haughtiness. 

If this explanation is correct, then it stands as a good example of how nearly all the subtlety of Shlomo ha'Melech's wisdom is lost when his words are crudely translated into English and condensed into a non-Jewish-style proverb.