Proverbs 4:19 - Exposition

The way of the wicked is as darkness. In contrast with the path of the just is the way of the wicked, which is described as darkness itself: i.e. so deeply enveloped in gloom that the wicked are not able even to see the obstacles and impediments against which they stumble, and which are the cause of their ruin. It is a way dark throughout—a via tenebrosa (Vulgate)—terminating at length in "the blackness of darkness." As light is emblematical of knowledge, holiness, and joy, so darkness represents ignorance, unholiness, and misery (see Isaiah 8:22 ). Darkness ( aphelah ); strictly, thick darkness, midnight gloom, the entire absence of light. It is the word used of the plague of "thick darkness" that settled over all the land of Egypt, even a darkness that "might be felt," when the Egyptians "saw not one another, nor any arose from his place for three days" ( Exodus 10:21-23 ). It occurs again in Proverbs 7:9 , "in the black and dark night." In this darkness the wicked cannot help but stumble. Compare our Lord's teaching, "But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him" ( John 11:10 ; cf. John 12:36 ). The expression, they know not at what they stumble, carries with it the idea that they are so ignorant that they neither know wickedness as wickedness, nor do they apprehend the destruction which it involves. "Sins, however great and detestable they may be, are looked upon as trivial, or as not sins at all, when men get accustomed to them". On "stumble" ( kashal ) , see Proverbs 7:12 ; and on the destruction of the wicked implied in the stumbling, see Proverbs 1:27 , seq; Proverbs 2:18-22 ; Proverbs 3:35 .