“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness”: “The way of the wicked” is again the life, the way of life, or the lifestyle of the wicked. Their life, or the way they live, is compared now to “deep darkness”, which translates a word used in Exo 10.21 of the kind of thick darkness that covered Egypt, “a darkness to be felt.” Languages often have special names or ideophones for total darkness, the blackness of night, to describe this quality of darkness. The sense of this simile is opposite to that of the simile in the previous verse, picturing the life of bad people as uncertain and perilous.

“They do not know over what they stumble”: This clause is the consequence of the first; for example, “It is so dark they cannot see what trips them” or “. . . what makes them stumble.” It may be necessary in some languages to state at the beginning that these people “stumble”: “They fall down but they can’t see what. . ..” As the context shows, the reference is to uncertainty and misfortunes in life.

Some interpreters think a better contrast between verses 18 and 19 is obtained by reversing their order. If you find this contrast more natural, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch provides a model for this by placing verse 18, the positive image, at the end. In this case the two verse numbers are written together:

“The life of those who disregard God is like the darkness of night. They fall down and do not know what made them stumble. But the life of those who obey God is like the sunrise; it becomes brighter and brighter until it is broad daylight.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .