What Does Proverbs 4:16 Mean?
For they do not sleep unless they do evil, and their sleep is struck from them unless they cause some to stumble.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.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 stumble” 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 plans emptiness upon his bed; he plants himself upon a way that is not good; he does not spurn evil.For their feet run toward evil, and hurry to pour out blood.So let us no longer judge one another, but judge this instead, that no one sets a stone to strike against, or a trap, in his brother's way.THE THREAD
And it shall be said, Heap up, heap up, clear the way, lift up the stumbling block 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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