sound practical wisdom: the level-headed good sense that knows what will actually work, together with the effectiveness it produces
This is a wisdom word, and it turns up only in wisdom poetry and in two prophetic lines: six times in Job, four in Proverbs, once in Isaiah, once in Micah. It does not mean wisdom in general. It names the practical, down-to-earth kind: knowing what will actually work, and having what it takes to bring it off. Proverbs 2:7 pictures God storing it up for the upright, like a reserve they can draw on.
The company it keeps shows what it is:
- alongside a word for a plan or the advice behind it (עֵצָה) in Proverbs 8:14 and Isaiah 28:29
- alongside a word for shrewd forethought (מְזִמָּה) in Proverbs 3:21
- alongside "strength" in Job 12:16
- alongside "help" in Job 6:13
In each pairing it is the partner that supplies workable competence rather than raw power or a bright idea.
Because the word covers both the good sense and its results, it slides between the two. In Job 5:12 God frustrates schemers so that their hands accomplish nothing effective, and the word stands for the result they never reach. In Job 6:13 Job asks whether his own competence has been driven out of him, and the word stands for the capacity itself. English needs two different words there; Hebrew used one.
God has this quality in full measure. Job 12:16 sets it beside his strength, and Isaiah 28:29 says he is great in it, drawing the point from a farmer's practical know-how in handling different grains the right way. People can hold it, lose it, or set themselves against it, which is what Proverbs 18:1 describes.
Nuances
Whether this word stands in Job 30:22 at all, and what the line says if it does.
- majorityThe consonants should be read as a different noun meaning "crash, tempest", so the line describes God tossing Job about in a storm and the verse tells us nothing about competence.; David J. A. Clines, Job 21-37, Word Biblical Commentary 18A; Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, apparatus at Job 30:22
- minorityThe received Hebrew is kept, and the line says God melts away what is left of Job's competence.; BDB, s.v. תּוּשִׁיָּה