What Does Proverbs 20:20 Mean in the King James?
Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “curseth” also means “make light of”, and the verse answers that contempt with a lamp extinguished in darkness.
THE MEANING
When you make light of your father or mother, the verse pictures your own lamp going out inside darkness’s pupil. The harm it names does not stay aimed at the parent: contempt dims the life that carries it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that you can make your parents small without dimming your own light.
THE ROOT
מְקַלֵּל
meqallel
GROWS FROM
קָלַל
q-l-l
To be light or slight; to treat as having little weight or account, and by extension, to curse.
The English word “curseth” hides the root’s sense of making someone light or insignificant. The verse links that diminishment of a parent with the extinguishing of the speaker’s own lamp.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light, slight, or of little weight.
קַל
This branch preserves the root’s concrete sense of lightness beneath “curseth.”
qelalah: A curse or malediction.
קְלָלָה
This noun names the curse that grows from the same root as treating someone as slight.
בְּאִישׁוֹן חֹשֶׁךְ
bə’ishon choshekh
GROWS FROM
חָשַׁךְ
ḥ-sh-kh
To grow dark or become dark.
“obscure darkness” in this verse is bə’ishon choshekh. The Hebrew phrase is “in the pupil of darkness.” אִישׁוֹן (’ishon) means “pupil,” the eye’s dark center; with חֹשֶׁךְ (choshekh), “darkness,” it places the extinguished lamp at darkness’s depth.
ALSO GROWS
ḥashakh: To grow dark or become dark.
חָשַׁךְ
The verb presents darkness as a state that overtakes light.
choshekh: Darkness or obscurity.
חֹשֶׁךְ
This noun appears in the verse’s image of the lamp disappearing into darkness.
THE PATTERN
Scripture binds the way parents are treated to the child’s own life and body.
The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.THE THREAD
Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.“Setteth light by” comes from the same קָלַל (qalal) root as “curseth”: to make light of, slight, or treat as insignificant. This verse makes explicit the seed hidden in Proverbs’ wording: the curse begins by making one’s parents small.
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