What Does Proverbs 4:19 Mean in the King James?
The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.
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 darkness does not merely surround the stumble; it hides what is making it happen.
THE MEANING
A wicked way is dark in a way that hides what your foot strikes. You can keep moving while the cause of your fall remains outside your awareness; the blindness and the stumble belong to one condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person always knows what caused their fall: on this path, not perceiving the cause is part of the danger.
THE ROOT
יִכָּשֵׁלוּ
yikkāšēlū
GROWS FROM
כשל
To stumble, totter, or fail.
The Hebrew word means “they stumble,” and its root also forms a word for a stumbling block. The verse joins the fall to what trips the walker: in the darkness, the cause remains unseen.
ALSO GROWS
mikshol: Stumbling block, obstacle
מִכְשׁוֹל
This branch names what causes a stumble, matching the verse’s question about what they cannot perceive.
kishalon: A fall, failure
כִּשָּׁלוֹן
This branch shows that the same root can name the stumble as a fall or failure.
אֲפֵלָה
ʾăp̄ēlāh
GROWS FROM
אפל
To be dark; darkness or gloom.
The verse does not describe darkness as mere scenery: it is the condition in which the walker cannot see what causes the stumble. Related forms carry the same image of dimness and gloom.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōp̄el: Gloom, darkness
אֹפֶל
This noun repeats the darkness at the heart of the verse’s image.
ʾāp̄ēl: Dark, dim
אָפֵל
This adjective describes the obscured quality of the way itself.
THE PATTERN
When the way is dark, movement continues without sight of its cause, and stumbling becomes hard to understand.
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.THE THREAD
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.Proverbs 16:18 uses כִּשָּׁלוֹן (kishalon, “a fall”), from the same root כשל as “they stumble” here. This verse says the walker cannot see what brings the stumble; Proverbs 16:18 names haughtiness as what comes before the fall.
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