King James Bible
"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."
The light represents Christ and divine truth actively penetrating spiritual darkness—a present tense verb emphasizing ongoing action. This metaphor builds on John's prologue theme of Christ as the eternal Word bringing illumination to a morally and spiritually darkened world. The Greek word translated 'comprehended' carries dual meaning: to grasp intellectually or to overpower/extinguish. The darkness neither understood nor conquered the light, highlighting both humanity's spiritual blindness and evil's inability to defeat God's redemptive work.