What Does Proverbs 7:9 Mean in the King James?
In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night:
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 “black” of night is called its pupil, making darkness the place where sight narrows to its center.
THE MEANING
Twilight gives way to evening, then the verse places the reader in the pupil of night and deep darkness. The field of sight contracts until what lies ahead is obscured.
THE ROOT
אִישׁוֹן
ishon
GROWS FROM
איש
Man, person; with the diminutive ending -on, little man.
Ishon names the pupil, traditionally understood as the eye’s little person. Here it makes the black of night an eye’s dark center, placing darkness inside the image of seeing.
ALSO GROWS
ʾîš: Man, person.
אִישׁ
This base noun is heard within ishon and gives the pupil its image of a little person.
ʾîšôn: Pupil of the eye; the dark center of the eye.
אִישׁוֹן
In this verse the same word names the black center of night, joining darkness and sight.
אֲפֵלָה
afelah
GROWS FROM
אפל
Be dark, dim, or obscure.
“dark” in this verse is afelah. The final word gives the scene the force of obscurity, not just the name of a time of day. Beside the pupil-word, the verse moves from the center of sight into darkness that fills the scene.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōfel: Gloom, darkness.
אֹפֶל
This noun carries the same root’s sense of obscurity into a description of darkness.
ʾāfēl: Dark, dim, gloomy.
אָפֵל
This adjective describes the obscuring quality that deepens the verse’s final image.
THE PATTERN
As light recedes, scripture uses darkness to show perception narrowing and the path becoming harder to discern.
The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!THE THREAD
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,The “apple of the eye” is אִישׁוֹן (ishon, pupil), the same word Proverbs uses for the black of night. In one verse the pupil is protected; here it names night’s dark center, letting eye and darkness share one image.
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