navel

At its heart this word describes a living thing losing its freshness and sinking down. A leaf, a flower, or the grass loses its moisture, droops, and drops away. The picture is not only drying out but drooping and falling.

From that plain image the word reaches further. People, and even the whole land, can be said to wither. Enemies lose their nerve and waste away, and in the prophets the earth itself languishes and fades like a dying plant. The same collapse that overtakes a flower overtakes nations and the ground beneath them.

At its widest the word simply means to wear away or give out. A crumbling mountain wears down and falls, and a person worn past their strength droops and gives out. All of these share one motion: something once firm or fresh sinking, fading, and falling.

This is a separate word that only happens to be spelled the same way, and it has nothing to do with fading plants. It belongs to the Bible's idea of the fool, and in the Bible a fool is not merely someone who is not clever. The fool is morally and socially disgraceful: someone who tramples what is decent and brings shame on himself and on others.

So the word runs in two directions. Used of oneself it means to act like that kind of fool, to behave senselessly and shamefully. Used of someone or something else it means to treat them as a disgraceful fool: to shame them, dishonor them, spurn them, or make them vile.

That is why the same word can describe a person disgracing himself by boasting, a people spurning the God who saved them, and a son treating his own father with contempt. Folly and disgrace are two sides of one act.