Why is jealousy so dangerous?

Proverbs 14:30A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

Proverbs 27:4Anger is cruel, and wrath is like a flood, but jealousy is even more dangerous.

Jealousy is destructive, like cancer, by pushing us to focus on the destructive emotions of anger and bitterness rather than on being content with who we are and what we have.

Genesis 13:7So disputes broke out between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot. (At that time Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land.)

Genesis 30:1-3When Rachel saw that she wasn’t having any children for Jacob, she became jealous of her sister. She pleaded with Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!” Then Jacob became furious with Rachel. “Am I God?” he asked. “He’s the one who has kept you from having children!” Then Rachel told him, “Take my maid, Bilhah, and sleep with her. She will bear children for me, and through her I can have a family, too.”

Genesis 37:11, 18, 24, 28While his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant. . . . When Joseph’s brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him. . . . Then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it. . . . So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph’s brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for twenty pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt.

Jealousy is divisive and often tears families and friends apart because it embraces a spirit of negative competition.