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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 20:20 - 20:20
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The following group begins, for once more the aim of this older Book of Proverbs becomes prominent, with an inculcation of the fourth
(Note: i.e., The fifth according to the arrangement of the Westminster Confession.)
commandment.
20 He that curseth his father and his mother,
His light is extinguished in midnight darkness.
The divine law, Exo 21:17; Lev 20:9, condemns such an one to death. But the proverb does not mean this sentence against the criminal, which may only seldom be carried into execution, but the fearful end which, because of the righteousness of God ruling in history, terminates the life of such an unnatural son (Pro 30:17). Of the godless, it has already been said that their light is extinguished, Pro 13:9, there is suddenly an end to all that brightened, i.e., made happy and embellished their life; but he who acts wickedly (קִלֵּל, R. קל, levem esse, synon. הִקְלָה, Deu 27:16), even to the cursing of his father and mother, will see himself surrounded by midnight darkness (Symmachus, σκοτομήνῃ, moonless night), not: he will see himself in the greatest need, forsaken by divine protection (Fleischer), for Jansen rightly: Lux et lucerna in scripturis et vitae claritatem et posteritatem et prosperitatem significat. The apple of the eye, אִישׁוֹן, of darkness (vid., Pro 7:9), is that which forms the centre of centralization of darkness. The Syr. renders it correctly by bobtho, pupil of the eye, but the Targ. retains the אֱשׁוּן of the Kerı̂, and renders it in Aram. by אֱתוּן, which Rashi regards as an infin., Parchon as a particip. after the form עֱרוּךְ; but it may be also an infin. substantive after the form עֱזוּז, and is certainly nothing else than the abbreviated and vocally obscured אִישׁוֹן. For the Talm. אֲשַׁן, to be hard, furnishes no suitable idea; and the same holds true of אֲשׁוּנֵי, times, Lev 15:25 of the Jerusalem Targ.; while the same abbreviation and the same passing over of o into u represents this as the inflected אִישׁוֹן (= עֵת). There is also no evidence for a verb אָשַׁן, to be black, dark; the author of Aruch interprets אשׁונא, Bereschith Rabba, c. 33, with reference to the passage before us, of a dark bathing apartment, but only tentatively, and אישׁון is there quoted as the Targ. of צֵל, Gen 19:8, which the text lying before us does not ratify. Ishon means the little man (in the eye), and neither the blackness (Buxtorf and others) nor the point of strength, the central point (Levy) of the eye.
(Note: Vid., Fleischer in Levy's Chald. Wörterbuch, i. 419.)