“The wicked flee when no one pursues,
But the righteous are bold as a lion.”

The Wicked

I think “wicked” is used here to refer to godless people, who disregard God’s commands on how to treat their neighbour, so are usually thought of as cruel and frightening.

Comedy in the bible

If the bible was only a book, and not the word of God, it would still be unique and unlike any other. For only the bible includes every single aspect of human life, from the heights of spiritual hunger of mankind, to the lows of human depravity, from the extremes of suffering and tragedy, to the lightest laughter of human folly and slapstick comedy.
When we read it with reverence, it’s easy to miss the laughter, and to lose some of its meaning.
Here we have a picture of the wicked who are neither powerful nor frightening. Instead, they invite our ridicule and contemptuous laughter, as they are frightened and run away from nothing. It reminds me of a Benny Hill type chase with people running at full speed in circles.
Yet while it is silly to run away from what is nothing or unreal, to devote our whole lives to the unreal is a wretched waste. Yet that is what we do when we turn away from God and His truth and pursue idols and false gods. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

The modern world

We can see that in our world today, for it seems that people who are separated from the reality of God need to create a catastrophic reckoning of their own. It reminds me of the story of Henny Penny from primary school – a chicken who had an acorn fall on her head, and thought the sky was falling in. She panicked all the other animals, and they were led astray by Foxy Loxy, who ate them.
My favourite example of this is Paul Ehrlich’s book, “The Population Bomb” of 1971, which predicted global population growth would soon exceed the earth’s capacity to produce food, leading to widespread famine and crises. Its themes have remained the blind faith of atheists and sensationalist news media since then, despite being silly in two ways:

1. Widespread famine and poverty already existed in the world, although comfortable Westerners like Paul Ehrlich were not affected by that. In 1950, 60% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, without enough to eat.
2. At the time the book was published, it was already out of date. Norman Borlaug, who came from an ordinary Christian background in the US, responded to the starvation he saw during the Great Depression and in other countries, by developing technologies like synthetic fertilizers and scientific plant breeding to hugely increase the world’s food output. His work became known as the Green Revolution of the mid 20th century, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and it reduced the world percentage living in extreme poverty down to 10%. Unfortunately, his work was opposed by atheists (it didn’t fit their theories), who were largely successful in stopping his work in the African continent. See https://questionsandbelief.org/feeding-the-five-billion

The Righteous

I think “the righteous” here refers to those who are humble and recognise their sinful state before God; they respond with thankfulness for his mercy and blessings, and a sincere desire to be right with Him and follow His commands.
That’s almost the opposite of the popular understanding of boldness, which is associated with pride, loudness, audacious and risky behaviour. For when we see our disobedience to God, that removes our pride and boasting, and leads to contrition before Him.

Bold as a lion

I think of two key aspects of being bold as a lion:

1. The lion has the self-assurance of overwhelming power and strength. And when we are doing God’s will, He provides His overwhelming power and strength to achieve His purpose;
2. The lion does not roar very often, instead it quietly stalks its prey. And it’s a lesson of life that those who keep their words short will be listened to more attentively, while the loud and arrogant are easy to ignore, as they are usually wrong.

I think the key to being bold is learning to be led by the Holy Spirit, which is given to all who believe (Acts 2:38). It’s learning to speak as God gives us the words, in contrast to speaking from our own knowledge and wisdom; e.g. Paul spent years in quiet learning after his Road to Damascus experience before he began public ministry.

Being led by the Holy Spirit allows us to be patient and gentle with people, but with understanding, assurance and a lion-like strength and determination that only God can give.
It also allows us to boldly reject the self-defeating temptations by Satan, when he invites us to see ourselves as timid and unskilled, unable to take up the opportunities given by God; or when Satan invites us to loudly proclaim statements which are not of God.
And the Spirit enables us to boldly endure misunderstanding from the world; for the world sees self-promotion as the purpose of boldness, while God’s path may require self-sacrifice.

Jesus

This contrast is best shown in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. To the world it seemed a complete failure, and his refusal to free himself seemed like timidity. Yet in reality His courage and boldness was infinitely great and beyond our imagination, for on the cross He took on himself the penalty of death for the sin of all mankind.

May we each be given the boldness to do God’s will to the end of our earthly life.