StrongerBible

mōrainō

μωραίνω

GreekG3471“make foolish, become fools, ...”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 5:13Luk 14:34Rom 1:221Co 1:20
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademoh-RYE-nohverb

What mōrainō means

1

to turn foolish, or to make someone or something foolish and expose it as folly

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

At its root this verb is about losing the very thing that makes you what you are. Underneath the idea of foolishness sits an older, plainer picture of going dull, sluggish, and useless. From there it stretches to the mind and the will: a person, or a whole outlook, that has gone slack and turned to folly. In the Bible this is never merely a lack of brains. Folly here is a moral and spiritual thing, the state of someone who has turned away from God, so the word carries real weight.

The verb works in two directions that mirror each other. Someone can turn foolish, ending up a fool without anyone naming the cause. Paul uses it this way of people who claimed to be wise and instead became fools. It can also be active, with God as the one doing it: God makes the world's proud wisdom foolish, both draining it of its power and showing it up for the empty thing it always was. That active use follows a line running back through the Old Testament, where the God of Israel is the one who turns clever schemers and diviners into fools.

So the two Pauline verses are a matched pair. In one, the self styled wise turn into fools; in the other, God turns their wisdom to folly. The reversal is deliberate: human wisdom that sets itself against God does not just fail, it is unmasked.

Nuances

1ato turn into a fool, to end up foolish (often with the sense that this comes as a judgment)
Rom 1:22
Rom 1:22

The exact force of the passive verb rendered they became fools in Romans 1:22.

  • minorityIt reads primarily as an act of God: God is the unnamed one who made them foolish, matching the later refrain that God gave them up and echoing Jeremiah's words about idol makers who became foolish.; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993), 283; Georg Bertram, TDNT IV, 832-847
  • majorityIt describes what they became of themselves, they turned into fools, with the biting irony that people claiming wisdom proved the opposite, held together with the note that this folly is itself God's judgment.; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT, 1996), 109-110; Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT, 1998), ad loc.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC, 1975), 1:119
1bto make foolish, to reduce something to folly and show it up for the folly it is
1Co 1:20
2

of salt: to lose its saltiness and so become useless

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In the sayings about salt, the same verb is put to a surprising use: salt that has lost its taste. The image is of something that can no longer do the one job it exists to do. Salt that cannot salt anything is good for nothing.

What makes this striking is that the verb almost everywhere else means to turn foolish, not to go flat. Choosing it for salt is unusual, and it colors the saying: a disciple who has lost their savor is like salt gone useless, and the very word hints at foolishness lurking behind that uselessness. Whether the flavor is literally recoverable is beside the point; Jesus is painting a picture, not teaching chemistry.

The force of the image is loss. Something meant to preserve and to season has become inert and worthless, and that, applied to a follower, is a sober warning.

Mat 5:13Luk 14:34

What scholars say about mōrainō

μωραίνω is a denominative verb from the adjective μωρός, whose base sense is not intellectual but physical: dull, sluggish, blunt, insipid. Outside the Bible the verb is almost always intransitive (to be silly, play the fool: Aeschylus Pers. 719; Euripides; Aristotle EN 1148b2), and BDAG notes that the active causative sense (make foolish) is essentially a development of biblical Greek. That causative use arises in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew Piel of סכל, most clearly at Isa 44:25 (μωραίνων, God making foolish the diviners); the intransitive passive elsewhere renders the Niphal of סכל and בער (2 Kgdms 24:10; Jer 10:14). Georg Bertram (TDNT IV, 832-847) and NIDNTTE (Silva) trace this trajectory and stress that the Septuagint moralizes folly along the lines of Hebrew נבל and סכל, so the fool is the one who lives without God. Paul's active ἐμώρανεν (1 Cor 1:20) deliberately imitates this prophetic register (echoing Isa 29:14, 19:11-12, 33:18 and 44:25), and his passive ἐμωράνθησαν (Rom 1:22) closely echoes Jer 10:14 LXX. Anthony Thiselton (NIGTC 1 Corinthians) presses the declarative force (God has shown up worldly wisdom for the folly it is), while Fee, Garland and Barrett keep the performative force alongside it. For the salt sayings (Matt 5:13; Luke 14:34), the verb's sense become tasteless is otherwise unattested before the gospels; the dominant explanation, from Felix Perles through Matthew Black (An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts) and Joachim Jeremias, is an Aramaic substrate in which the root tpl meant both tasteless and foolish, preserved in the rabbinic association of salt with wisdom (b. Bekhoroth 8b). France (NICNT Matthew) and Hagner (WBC) accept this; Nolland (NIGTC Matthew) is cautious that the foolish sense of tpl is securely attested; Gundry and Luz resist or remain agnostic. The lexica themselves divide: BDAG and Louw-Nida list the foolish and tasteless senses as distinct, while LSJ, Bertram and NIDNTTE unify them under the root idea of going dull and useless.

Where scholars disagree about mōrainō

Whether the foolish sense (Romans, 1 Corinthians) and the tasteless sense (the salt sayings) are one word with a single core meaning or two distinct meanings that share a form.

  • contestedTwo distinct senses that should be listed separately, make foolish and make tasteless, since the tasteless use is essentially unattested in Greek outside the gospels.; BDAG, s.v. μωραίνω; Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 32.55
  • contestedOne word unified by the root idea of losing one's essential vigor and becoming dull or useless, an idea that reaches naturally to both folly and flat taste.; LSJ, s.v. μωραίνω; Georg Bertram, TDNT IV, 832-847; Moisés Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, s.v. μωρός
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. μωραίνωlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. μωραίνωlexicon
  • Georg Bertram, μωρός κτλ., TDNT IV, 832-847theological-dictionary
  • Moisés Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, s.v. μωρόςtheological-dictionary
  • Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 166-167monograph
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC, 1978), 595commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, 2007), 175commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT, 1996), 109-110commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (Anchor Bible, 1993), 283commentary
  • Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC, 2000), 162-166commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of μωραίνω

aorist passive subjunctive 3s

μωρανθῇ

Mat 5:13, Luk 14:34

aorist active indicative 3s

ἐμώρανεν

1Co 1:20

aorist passive indicative 3p

ἐμωράνθησαν

Rom 1:22