StrongerBible

sakhal

סָכָל

HebrewH5530“fool, foolish, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ecc 2:19Ecc 7:17Ecc 10:3 (2×)Ecc 10:14Jer 4:22Jer 5:21
Word studysah-KHAHLadj

What sakhal means

fool: the person who simply has no sense, whose emptiness of judgment shows up in what he does and how much he talks

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is the rarest of the Hebrew words for a fool. It occurs seven times in all, four of them in Ecclesiastes and two in Jeremiah. Where the common wisdom word for a fool (כְּסִיל) names a settled, self-satisfied person who has shut out correction, this word points at something plainer: the sense is simply missing, and the shortage becomes public. Ecclesiastes says his heart, which in Hebrew is the seat of judgment rather than of feeling, is lacking, and that he announces what he is to everyone he passes on the road (Ecclesiastes 10:3).

Ecclesiastes does most of the work with this word, and always in the same frame, the fool set beside the wise person. Nobody knows whether the heir who inherits a life's labor will be wise or a fool (Ecclesiastes 2:19). Do not be one, the book warns, or you will die before your time (Ecclesiastes 7:17). He piles up words about a future that no one can see (Ecclesiastes 10:14). The noun from the same root (סִכְלוּת) names folly as a quality; this word names the person who is full of it.

Jeremiah turns it on a whole nation. The people are "senseless children" who do not know God (Jeremiah 4:22), a "foolish people" with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear (Jeremiah 5:21). Nothing is being said there about anyone's intelligence. The charge is that a people who had every means of knowing God had lost the sense to use them, which is why the prophet stacks this word next to the coarser fool-word (אֱוִיל) in the same breath.

Nuances

1athe fool as a kind of person: the standing opposite of the wise, whose want of sense shows in what he does and how much he says
Ecc 2:19Ecc 7:17Ecc 10:3 (2×)Ecc 10:14
1bsenseless: said of a whole people whose eyes, ears, and judgment are shut to God
Jer 4:22Jer 5:21

What scholars say about sakhal

The lexica agree on the sense and give it without subdivision. BDB, HALOT, and DCH all render the adjective "foolish", used substantivally of a person as "a fool", across the same seven occurrences. The interest lies elsewhere. The word shares its three consonants with the far more frequent כְּסִיל in reverse order, and the lexica record the resemblance while leaving open whether the two are independent words or related by metathesis; that is an etymological question and does not touch the agreed sense. Distribution is the second datum: four of the seven occurrences fall in Ecclesiastes, whose late Hebrew and Aramaic contacts Seow documents at length in the linguistic sections of his Anchor Bible commentary, which is why Qohelet's preference for this term over כְּסִיל is often read as a feature of the book's language rather than as a portrait of a different kind of fool. On whether the fool-words are genuinely distinguishable at all, T. Donald's study of the semantic field of folly across Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes defends real distinctions among them, and Fox's excursus on the vocabulary of folly follows the same line; Whybray and Toy treat the terms as substantially overlapping caricatures serving a teaching purpose. The Jeremiah occurrences belong to a different discussion. There the word carries a prophetic indictment built out of wisdom vocabulary, a people who "do not know" the LORD (4:22) and are "without heart" (5:21), and McKane's study of the relation between the prophets and the wisdom tradition is the standard treatment of that overlap; his ICC commentary on Jeremiah handles the two verses in detail.

Where scholars disagree about sakhal

Whether the Hebrew fool-words (כְּסִיל, אֱוִיל, נָבָל, פֶּתִי, סָכָל) name genuinely different kinds of fool, or function as overlapping caricatures of a single negative type, in which case Ecclesiastes' preference for סָכָל reflects the book's late language rather than a different portrait.

  • majorityThe terms carry real, if soft, distinctions. Their different distributions across the biblical books and the different behaviors attributed to each support genuine differentiation, with this word leaning toward senselessness displayed in conduct.; T. Donald, 'The Semantic Field of Folly in Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes', Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963): 285-292; M. V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9 (Anchor Yale Bible 18A, 2000), pp. 38-43
  • minorityThe fool-words are substantially synonymous, functioning as stylistic variants and teaching caricatures rather than precisely sortable categories, so the choice of one term over another is a matter of a book's idiom rather than of meaning.; R. N. Whybray, Proverbs (New Century Bible Commentary, 1994); C. H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (ICC, 1899)

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. סָכָלlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. סָכָלlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. סָכָלlexicon
  • NIDOTTE, s.v. סכלdictionary
  • T. Donald, 'The Semantic Field of Folly in Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes', Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963): 285-292article
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9 (Anchor Yale Bible 18A, 2000), excursus on the vocabulary of folly, pp. 38-43commentary
  • C.-L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Yale Bible 18C, 1997)commentary
  • T. Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT, 1998)commentary
  • R. N. Whybray, Proverbs (New Century Bible Commentary, 1994)commentary
  • C. H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (ICC, 1899)commentary
  • W. McKane, Prophets and Wise Men (Studies in Biblical Theology 44, 1965)monograph
  • W. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, Volume 1 (ICC, 1986)commentary

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

All attested forms of סָכָל

m s absolute

סָכָל, סָּכָל

Ecc 2:19, Ecc 7:17, Ecc 10:3, Jer 5:21, Ecc 10:3, Ecc 10:14

m p absolute

סְכָלִים

Jer 4:22