Sense: to be foolish
v. — to be or become devoid of good sense or judgment.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools (μωραίνομαι); and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
Rom 1:22-23 (NRSV)
Today’s sense is expressed only by two rare words, כסל in Hebrew and μωραίνομαι in Greek. The Bible Sense Lexicon suggests that both of these words can express the meaning “to be or become devoid of good sense or judgment,” and if we examine the BSL concordance entry for “to be foolish,” it leads us to an interesting discovery along the way. Though these are two different words in two different languages, when they express the meaning “to be foolish” they both occur in contexts related to idolatry. The example of μωραίνομαι in Romans 1:22 is provided above, but כסל expresses this meaning in Jeremiah 10:8: “They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols” (NIV). Though we have very few contexts to understand the meanings of these words, one thing is clear: idolatry is one of the things which demonstrate a person’s foolishness.
What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?
Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.
The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.
Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.