moral folly: the culpable refusal to live wisely that marks a person as a fool, as opposed to a mere lack of intelligence
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
In the wisdom writings this folly is not slow-wittedness; it is a moral choice. The fool here is not someone who cannot understand but someone who will not: he shrugs off correction and has no fear of God. Folly is the exact opposite of the skill for living that the wise spend their lives learning.
Proverbs watches this folly from two angles. It is first a fixed trait of character. It is bound up in a child's heart, it clings to a person even when life pounds away at him, and the fool keeps coming back to it the way a dog returns to its vomit. It is also something that keeps spilling out into the open, in blurted words, hot tempers, and answers given before the question has even been heard.
At its most serious the word slides toward outright sin. Planning folly is flatly called sin, and when the psalm writers confess their folly to God they set it right beside their guilt. So one word can hold a person's inner bent, that bent put on display, and the moral weight it earns before God.
Nuances
1afolly as the fool's ingrained character: a settled bent toward unwise living that clings to him and that he keeps returning to
Names the abstract quality FOLLY itself, the foolishness, rather than the person who has it: what a heart pours out, what hands do, what gets spoken.Pro 15:2Pro 14:1
Spoken of as something a person owns or is wrapped up in (his folly, bound up in him), so it can lead him astray or destroy him as a force at work in his life.Pro 5:23Pro 22:15Pro 19:3
Pictured as a repeated, ingrained behavior a person returns to, like a dog going back to its vomit.Pro 26:11
Both
Both sit in the wisdom writings as the opposite of wisdom and understanding, naming the same moral failure: rejecting the discipline that leads to good sense.Pro 1:7Pro 15:21
They occur side by side, the foolish person and his folly together, so the fool is defined by the folly and the folly is what the fool produces.Pro 16:22Pro 27:22
Names the foolish PERSON, the fool himself, as a settled character: someone who despises wisdom and correction rather than the trait he carries.Pro 1:7Pro 12:15
Carries a moral and spiritual edge, not just a lack of brains: the fool's foolishness shows up as guilt and sin that provoke God, so the word can mark someone under judgment.Job 5:2Psa 107:17
Used in sayings about how the fool acts toward others: quarreling, blurting out, mocking guilt, so that even staying silent could make him look wiser.Pro 17:28Pro 20:3
כְּסִילוּתthe thick, self-satisfied dullness of the complacent fool; this word is the more active, correction-resisting folly of the willful fool
נְבָלָהoutrageous, disgraceful folly, a scandalous violation of decency such as sexual crime or sacrilege; far graver and more shocking than the everyday moral folly this word names
Names a settled defect in how a person thinks and behaves, something carried around and returned to again and again, rather than one shocking act.Pro 26:11Pro 14:24Pro 5:23
Belongs to the world of wisdom teaching, where it is the standing opposite of good sense and can be trained out of a person, especially a child.Pro 22:15Pro 15:21Pro 14:8
Shows up in ordinary bad judgment rather than crime: a quick temper, answering before listening, blurting out what should be held back.Pro 14:29Pro 18:13Pro 12:23
Can be owned as one's own failing in prayer, a private stupidity confessed to God and blamed for the trouble it brought on.Psa 38:5Psa 69:5Pro 19:3
Both
Both are used for what comes out of a person's mouth, so that the talk itself exposes what the speaker is.Pro 15:2Pro 15:14Isa 32:6Isa 9:17
Both name conduct condemned outright as guilt, something to be answered for rather than excused as an honest mistake.Pro 24:9Jdg 20:10
Names a particular outrageous deed, most often a sexual crime, that violates a person and horrifies everyone who hears of it.Gen 34:72Sa 13:12Jdg 19:23
Comes with the fixed phrase about a thing done "in Israel", so the act is charged as an offense against the whole people, and it covers other covenant crimes too: taking what was devoted to God, or committing adultery while claiming to speak for him.Deu 22:21Jos 7:15Jer 29:23
Is grave enough that God speaks of dealing with people according to it, here for saying what is false about him.Job 42:8
Can stick to a person as a label for who he is, so that the man's name and the outrage are said to be the same thing.1Sa 25:25
This folly carries real guilt. Merely planning it is called sin outright, and when a sufferer prays he lays his folly before God in the same breath as his wrongdoing, or watches it rot his body like an infected wound.Pro 24:9Psa 69:5Psa 38:5
It is a fixed bent of character rather than a passing lapse: tied into a child's heart from the start, still there after life has pounded away at the fool, and something he keeps circling back to the way a dog goes back to its vomit.Pro 22:15Pro 27:22Pro 26:11
It shows itself as hot haste. A quick temper does it, a hasty spirit puts it on display, and answering before the question has been heard is exactly this.Pro 14:17Pro 14:29Pro 18:13
It actively misleads the person carrying it. He wanders off the road and dies for want of correction, his own way is ruined by it, and the folly itself works as a deception that passes for something better.Pro 5:23Pro 19:3Pro 14:8
Both
Both name the quality itself, not the person who has it, and both stand as the direct counterpart of wisdom: the thing wisdom is measured against and shown to be better than.Pro 14:8Ecc 2:13
Both come out of a fool's mouth. His talk is where either word becomes visible: one pours out of him and gets broadcast, the other is what his first words already are.Pro 15:2Pro 12:23Ecc 10:13
This folly is something a thinker deliberately investigates. The writer of Ecclesiastes gives his mind to knowing it, sets out to search it and get its measure, and even takes hold of it on purpose to see what it will yield.Ecc 1:17Ecc 7:25Ecc 2:3
It nearly always travels in company with the word for madness, so its background is frenzy and being out of one's senses rather than moral rebellion.Ecc 1:17Ecc 2:12Ecc 7:25
It gets weighed on a scale rather than warned against. Wisdom is worth more than it by as much as light is worth more than darkness, and a small amount of it is heavy enough to outweigh a whole reputation for wisdom.Ecc 2:13Ecc 10:1
Belongs to the wisdom writings' running contest between good sense and its opposite: it is what a person is left holding when he turns down instruction, and it is set directly against prudence and understanding.Pro 14:8Pro 15:21Pro 16:22
Names a settled trait of the person himself, bound up inside him, stubborn enough to survive a beating, and something he keeps coming back to.Pro 22:15Pro 27:22Pro 26:11
Keeps spilling out of a person in loose talk and a short temper: it is poured out of the mouth, blurted before the question is finished, and put on open display.Pro 15:2Pro 18:13Pro 14:29
A speaker can own it as his own guilt and confess it to God, so it functions as a word for personal fault a person admits about himself.Psa 38:5Psa 69:5
Both
Both are regularly rendered "folly" or "foolishly" in English, so the two words arrive looking like one word in most translations.Pro 26:4Job 1:22
Both name a fault that carries blame rather than an honest mistake, and each stands in the same breath as sin: planning the one is flatly called sin, and the other appears in the sentence that clears Job of sinning.Pro 24:9Job 1:22
Both describe something other people can see and name in someone: the fool lays his out in the open, and God says he saw the other in Samaria's prophets.Pro 13:16Jer 23:13
Works as a charge laid at somebody's door rather than a quality somebody has: it is what one party ascribes to another, and it is always given or laid on, never grown into.Job 1:22Job 24:12
In both Job passages the one who might be accused of it is God: the narrator clears Job for never laying it on God, and Job himself says God lays no such charge while the wounded cry for help.Job 1:22Job 24:12
Names something unfitting and offensive in God's sight rather than a want of good sense: it is what God says he saw in the prophets of Samaria, listed one line before a heavier charge against the prophets of Jerusalem.Jer 23:13
ivvelet in the other biblical languages
ἀφροσύνηGreek“foolishness”the ordinary Greek word for foolishness, the standard counterpart used when the Old Testament is put into Greek
In the wisdom writings it is the settled character of the fool, the fixed opposite of wisdom rather than a passing lapse, spilling out through his mouth and exposing the deceit underneath.Pro 15:2Pro 14:8
It names an ingrained, incorrigible folly that clings to a person even under discipline, bound into a child's heart and impossible to grind out of a fool.Pro 22:15Pro 27:22
Both
Both name folly as a moral and spiritual fault rather than mere dullness of mind: a defiling condition of the heart that Scripture counts as sin, not a low IQ.Mrk 7:22Pro 24:9
In the New Testament its most sustained use is rhetorical and self-referential: Paul labels his own reluctant boasting against his rivals as foolishness, a mode of speech he takes up under protest and knows is beneath him. The Hebrew word is never a speaker's ironic self-description like this.2Co 11:12Co 11:172Co 11:21
μωρίαGreek“foolishness”foolishness with a sharper edge, the folly the world sees in the message of the cross
What scholars say about ivvelet
אִוֶּלֶת is the abstract noun for the moral folly of the אֱוִיל, the fool of the wisdom tradition, and outside Proverbs it appears only in two confessional psalms (Ps 38:5; 69:5), where it stands parallel to guilt. The lexica agree on the sense "folly, foolishness" and treat the folly as ethical and volitional rather than intellectual: a refusal of discipline and of the fear of the LORD, not a deficiency of intellect. Standard treatments distinguish it from the complacent dullness of the כְּסִיל (and the abstract כְּסִילוּת), from the naivety of the פֶּתִי, and from the scandalous outrage of נְבָלָה. The association of folly with sin is explicit at Prov 24:9 and in the psalmic confessions, which is why several studies read the word as denoting culpable, not merely imprudent, conduct.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. אִוֶּלֶתlexicon
BDB, s.v. אִוֶּלֶתlexicon
DCH, s.v. אִוֶּלֶתlexicon
R. Laird Harris, TWOT, entry 44 (אול)theological-dictionary
M. Sæbø, "אויל ʾĕwîl fool," in TLOTtheological-dictionary
Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible)commentary