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No. “To err is human, to forgive divine” is not in the Bible. It is a line of poetry by the English poet Alexander Pope. It comes from An Essay on Criticism, a long poem published in 1711, when Pope was about 23. And here is the part almost nobody knows: the line was not written about a friend who hurt you or a family that let you down. It comes at the end of a passage about writers and critics tearing into each other’s work.
If you always thought it was scripture, you are in very good company. It sounds like the Bible. It talks about God. Preachers have quoted it for three hundred years. It is one of the easiest mix-ups in the English language, and the true story behind it is better than the myth.
Where “To Err Is Human, to Forgive Divine” Really Comes From
Pope published An Essay on Criticism in May 1711. He had been working on it since around 1707. The whole poem is written in rhyming pairs of lines, and it is a kind of rulebook in verse: how to write well, and how to judge other people’s writing fairly.
The famous line sits near the end of Part II, at line 525. Here are the four lines it closes:
Ah, ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Part II (1711)
Nor in the critic let the man be lost!
Good-nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Just before this, Pope is complaining about writers who reach the top and then “spurn some others down.” He says jealous writers turn into “the sport of fools.” So his plea is simple. Don’t let being a critic swallow up the human being inside you. Be smart, yes, but be kind too. Writers will make mistakes. Forgive them.
Here is the surprising part. Read the very next lines and Pope tells the critic that if there is still some anger left over, “Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes.” He means truly ugly, corrupt writing, not a clumsy poem. In other words, the most famous sentence about forgiveness in English started life as advice to book reviewers: go easy on a bad rhyme, and save your fire for things that really matter.
Pope Only Wrote Half of It
The first half, “to err is human,” was already very old. It is the English form of a Latin saying, errare humanum est. The Roman speaker Cicero made the same point in one of his speeches against Mark Antony: anyone can make a mistake, but only a fool stays in it. Centuries later, Augustine said in a sermon that to err was human, but to stay in error out of stubbornness was devilish.
So the old version went: to err is human, to stay wrong is wicked. Pope turned it around. He did not finish the line with a warning about the person who made the mistake. He finished it with a word about the person who has to deal with it. That small change is why his version is the one people remember.
The Poet Found It Hard Too
One more true detail, offered gently. A critic named John Dennis attacked An Essay on Criticism fiercely. Pope did not forget it. Years later, Dennis turned up as one of the targets in The Dunciad, Pope’s long satire on writers he thought were dull or had wronged him.
That is not a gotcha. It is the most human thing in the whole story. A young man wrote a perfect sentence about forgiveness, and then found, like the rest of us, that writing it was the easy part.
What the Bible Actually Says About Forgiveness
Here is where it gets interesting. Pope’s line puts forgiveness on God’s side of the line, up with the divine. And the Bible would agree with him that far.
The prophet Daniel prays: “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him” (Daniel 9:9). Hebrew even has a word for forgiveness, selichah, that the Old Testament only ever uses for God. (We wrote about that in our study of the Hebrew word for forgiveness.) When Jesus told a paralysed man his sins were forgiven, the religious teachers in the room objected: “who can forgive sins but God only?” (Mark 2:7). They were right about where forgiveness comes from. What shocked them was who was doing it.
But then the Bible does something Pope’s line does not. It does not leave forgiveness up in heaven as a rare, superhuman thing. It hands it to ordinary people.
Jesus taught His friends to pray: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). When Peter asked how many times he had to forgive his brother, and offered seven as a generous number, Jesus answered: “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). And Paul wrote: “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13).
Notice the order in that last verse. You are not asked to forgive because you are strong enough. You are asked to pass on something you were given first. Forgiveness really is divine. The Bible’s surprise is that God shares it.
Why the Difference Matters
Pope’s line is kind, and it does real good. It reminds us that everyone makes mistakes, which takes some of the shame out of our own.
But it can also leave a quiet way out. If forgiving is divine, and I am only human, then maybe it is not really my job. Maybe that is for saints. Most of us have felt that, especially about the hurt that cut deepest.
The Bible closes that exit, but gently. It does not say “forgive because you should.” It says forgive “even as Christ forgave you.” That is not a demand to produce something you do not have. It is an invitation to share from what has already been given to you. And it is honest that this takes time. Peter’s question about counting suggests he knew forgiving the same person can take more than one try.
If there is someone you are still trying to forgive, you are not failing. You might find our short Am I Ready to Forgive? reflection a gentle place to start.
The Line Is Still Worth Saying
Keep saying it. “To err is human, to forgive divine” is a good sentence, and it has comforted a lot of people. Just know where it came from: a young poet in 1711, telling critics to go easy on each other. And know that the Bible goes one step further than the poem does. Forgiveness belongs to God, and God has chosen not to keep it.
If you like this kind of digging, you might enjoy our look at another saying many of us grew up believing was scripture: Is “hate the sin, love the sinner” in the Bible?
Let’s Talk
What is a saying you always assumed came from the Bible, until you found out it didn’t? Share it in the comments. We might dig into it next.
If this made you curious about what Jesus actually said about forgiveness, the Book of Matthew is where “seventy times seven” lives. You can get the whole book free, as a beautiful PDF and a full audiobook:
Questions People Ask (Q&A)
Is “To err is human, to forgive divine” in the Bible?
No. “To err is human, to forgive divine” (sometimes said as “to err is human, to forgive is divine”) is not in the Bible. It is a line from Alexander Pope’s poem An Essay on Criticism, published in 1711, Part II, line 525. It sounds like scripture because of its old-fashioned wording and its mention of the divine, but no Bible verse contains it.
Who said “To err is human, to forgive divine”?
The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine” in An Essay on Criticism in 1711. The first half was an older Latin idea, errare humanum est, found in different forms in Cicero and Augustine. Pope added the part about forgiveness.
What did Pope mean by “To err is human, to forgive divine”?
In context, Pope was writing about critics and writers who attack each other’s work out of jealousy. When he wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine,” he was urging critics to combine good sense with good nature: writers will make mistakes, so judge them with mercy. He then told critics to save their anger for truly corrupt writing rather than ordinary faults.
What does the Bible say about forgiveness instead?
The Bible agrees with “To err is human, to forgive divine” that forgiveness comes from God: “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses” (Daniel 9:9). But it goes further and asks people to forgive too, because they have been forgiven: “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). Jesus told Peter to forgive “Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
Share This
- I always thought “to err is human, to forgive divine” was a Bible verse. It’s actually from a 1711 poem by Alexander Pope, and it was about critics reviewing books. 🤯
- Learned today that Pope’s famous line on forgiveness was advice to book critics, and that the Bible goes one step further: forgiveness belongs to God, and God shares it. “Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
- “To err is human, to forgive divine” is not in the Bible. But what the Bible says about forgiveness instead might be even better. Worth the read.
