StrongerBible

evil

אֱוִיל

HebrewH0191“fool, foolish”

Appears 26 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 5:2Job 5:3Psa 107:17Pro 1:7Pro 7:22Pro 10:8Pro 10:10Pro 10:14Pro 10:21Pro 11:29Pro 12:15Pro 12:16Pro 14:3Pro 14:9Pro 15:5Pro 16:22Pro 17:28Pro 20:3Pro 24:7Isa 19:11Isa 35:8
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeeh-VEELadjective

What evil means

the perverse fool: a person whose settled disposition rejects wisdom, correction, and the fear of God, not someone of low intelligence

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is one of the Bible's harshest words for a fool, and it is a moral word, not an intelligence word. The standard reference works are unusually agreed on this: the problem with this kind of fool is not that he cannot understand, but that he will not be taught. He despises correction, mocks at being put right, and is sure his own way is best. The fool is quarrelsome, quick to show his anger, and cannot hold his tongue. Above all he treats wisdom and discipline with contempt, which is why the book of Proverbs sets him directly against the person who fears the Lord.

The senses below are the same fool seen at two scales. Most of the time, especially in Proverbs and once in Job, the word names an individual moral type, the obstinate person the wise are warned not to waste their breath on. But the prophets pick the word up and aim it higher, at a whole class of supposedly wise advisers, or at the entire covenant people, turning a domestic warning into a national indictment.

What ties it all together is the refusal to be formed. The folly of this fool is treated as something he has chosen and grown into, not something he was born unable to escape. Proverbs even pictures it as so deeply set in the adult that you could grind him like grain in a mortar and not separate him from it. Yet the one Psalm that uses the word leaves a door open: there fools who have brought ruin on themselves by their sins cry out to God and are healed, so the Bible holds the fool's hardness and the possibility of rescue together without fully resolving the tension.

Nuances

1athe perverse fool as an individual: the obstinate, insolent person who scorns instruction and cannot be corrected
Job 5:2Job 5:3Pro 1:7Pro 7:22Pro 10:8Pro 10:10Pro 10:14Pro 10:21Pro 11:29Pro 12:15Pro 12:16Pro 14:3
1bthe fool as a label flung at a group or a whole people: a prophet's indictment of supposed wisdom that has refused to know God
Isa 19:11Jer 4:22Hos 9:7

What scholars say about evil

The standard lexicons and the major Proverbs commentators are unusually agreed that this word means a morally perverse, religiously insolent, and characteristically incorrigible fool, not a person of low intelligence. BDB sets the tone with "fool (always morally bad), who despises wisdom and discipline," and the theological dictionaries push the moral reading further: TWOT (Goldberg) calls it moral perversion or insolence rather than mental stupidity, and the TDOT and TLOT articles (both by Sabo) and NIDOTTE (Wakely) define the fool by his refusal of formation and contempt for the fear of the Lord. Two questions remain open. The first is etymology: the lexicons reconstruct an unattested root with a sense of being perverse or deviating, and the comparison with an Arabic verb for turning aside is judged plausible but unproven, while older attempts to link the word to a Babylonian word for man or a Syriac word for iniquity are largely rejected. The second is how this fool maps against the other Hebrew fool-words. Goldberg and Longman propose a rising scale of folly, but Donald, using semantic-field analysis, and Fox, in his influential excursus, argue instead for distinct kinds rather than fixed degrees, noting that this word and the commoner dull-fool word overlap heavily and share the same abstract noun. Fox and Waltke jointly reject McKane's older thesis that early wisdom was merely practical and only later moralized, insisting that for the Hebrew sages intelligence and morality were never separable in the first place.

Where scholars disagree about evil

The origin of the word. There is no finite verb for this root in Biblical Hebrew, so its etymology is reconstructed rather than known, and scholars disagree about which language supplies the background.

  • majorityAn unattested Hebrew root meaning to be perverse or to deviate, most plausibly linked to an Arabic verb meaning to turn aside, though the lexicons all hedge this because that sense is secondary in Arabic.; Koehler, L., and Baumgartner, W. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אֱוִיל and אול I. Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000.; Brown, F., Driver, S. R., and Briggs, C. A. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אֱוִיל. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907.
  • minorityA link to the Babylonian word for man (as in the name Evil-Merodach), with a development from common man to ignoramus to fool. Now widely rejected, since that word is a positive status term with no negative sense, and the name is better explained as a deliberate Hebrew pun.; Wakely, R. Entry 211 (אול) in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. W. A. VanGemeren, 1:303-8. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.

Whether the Hebrew words for fool form a ranked scale of severity or instead name different kinds of folly that overlap.

  • minorityA rising scale of folly, with this word standing between the milder dull-fool word and the godless boor, and the scoffer worse still.; Goldberg, L. Entry 44 (אֱוִיל) in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, and B. K. Waltke, 1:19-20. Chicago: Moody, 1980.; Longman, T. III. Proverbs. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006, 102.
  • majorityNot a fixed scale but a field of distinct kinds of folly with porous, overlapping boundaries; this word and the commoner dull-fool word in particular share predicates and the same abstract noun, and parallelism often treats them as stylistic variants.; Donald, T. "The Semantic Field of 'Folly' in Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes." Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963): 285-92.; Fox, M. V. Proverbs 1-9. Anchor Bible 18A. New York: Doubleday, 2000, 38-43.
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

  • Brown, F., Driver, S. R., and Briggs, C. A. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אֱוִיל. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907.lexicon
  • Koehler, L., and Baumgartner, W. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אֱוִיל and אול I, trans. M. E. J. Richardson. Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000.lexicon
  • Clines, D. J. A., ed. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1, s.v. אֱוִיל. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993.lexicon
  • Goldberg, L. Entry 44 (אֱוִיל) in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, and B. K. Waltke, 1:19-20. Chicago: Moody, 1980.lexicon
  • Sabo, M. "אול." In Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. E. Jenni and C. Westermann, 1:55-56. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997.lexicon
  • Sabo, M. "אול." In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren, 1:137-40. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.lexicon
  • Wakely, R. Entry 211 (אול) in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. W. A. VanGemeren, 1:303-8. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.lexicon
  • Fox, M. V. Proverbs 1-9. Anchor Bible 18A. New York: Doubleday, 2000, 38-43.commentary
  • Fox, M. V. "Words for Folly." Zeitschrift fur Althebraistik 10 (1997): 4-17.article
  • Donald, T. "The Semantic Field of 'Folly' in Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes." Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963): 285-92.article
  • Waltke, B. K. The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004, 1:109-15.commentary
  • Longman, T. III. Proverbs. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006, 102.commentary
  • McKane, W. Proverbs: A New Approach. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970, 264-65.commentary
  • von Rad, G. Wisdom in Israel, trans. J. D. Martin. Nashville: Abingdon, 1972, 64-65.monograph
  • Cook, J. The Septuagint of Proverbs: Jewish and/or Hellenistic Proverbs? Vetus Testamentum Supplements 69. Leiden: Brill, 1997.monograph

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

All attested forms of אֱוִיל

m s absolute

אֱוִיל

Job 5:2, Job 5:3, Pro 7:22, Pro 10:14, Pro 11:29, Pro 12:15, Pro 12:16, Pro 14:3

m p absolute

אֱוִלִים, אֱוִילִים

Psa 107:17, Pro 14:9, Pro 16:22, Isa 19:11, Pro 1:7, Pro 10:21, Isa 35:8

m s construct

אֱוִיל

Pro 10:8, Pro 10:10