What Does Proverbs 4:16 Mean in the King James?
For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.
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
Their violence is bound to their rest: they cannot sleep until they do harm, or rest unless someone else falls.
THE MEANING
This verse names a life in which harm has become a condition for rest. These people cannot settle until they have done evil, and their sleep is robbed unless they make someone stumble. Another person’s lost footing is tied to their own ability to lie down.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that making someone else fall brings lasting rest; here, harm and rest are chained together.
THE ROOT
יַכְשִׁילוּ
yakshilu
GROWS FROM
כשל
k-sh-l
to stumble, totter, or cause to stumble
“cause some to fall” in this verse is yakshilu. The Hebrew form is causative: they are not merely losing their own footing; they make another lose it. A related word from this root means “stumbling block,” so the root also names the obstruction that can bring about a fall.
ALSO GROWS
kāshal: to stumble or totter
כָּשַׁל
This is the basic action behind the verse’s causative form: losing one’s footing becomes something done to another.
mikshol: stumbling block, obstacle
מִכְשׁוֹל
This word makes visible how the same root can name an obstruction that causes someone to fall.
וְנִגְזְלָה
venigzelah
GROWS FROM
גזל
g-z-l
to rob or seize
“is taken away” in this verse is venigzelah. The Hebrew describes their sleep with the language of robbery: rest is not merely delayed but seized. Beside their act of making others stumble, this word places even their rest inside a world shaped by force.
ALSO GROWS
gezel: robbery, plunder
גֶּזֶל
This noun makes explicit the force already present in the verse’s description of sleep being taken.
gazlan: robber
גַּזְלָן
This branch names the one who seizes what belongs to another, echoing the verse’s imagery of rest as something robbed.
THE PATTERN
When a life is organized around causing harm, injury becomes a practiced path rather than an accident.
He deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil.For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.THE THREAD
And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.The Hebrew word for “stumblingblock” here comes from the same כשל root as “cause some to fall” in Proverbs. One verse shows the stumbling block being taken out of the way; the other shows people making someone stumble.
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