Word Study – Fool and His Folly

Proverbs 26:4  “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”

 

Practically every modern translation will render the Hebrew word kasal as fool.  In Proverbs 26 the writer devotes twelve verses to the word kasal (fool) warning us against his folly (Hebrew – ‘aval).   Do we ever stop to consider just what a fool is?

 

The word fool in English has taken on many different forms throughout the history of the English language.  In the 21^st Century the word fool has come to represent anyone who performs a senseless act, an act without thinking it through. When we say that “He is a fool” or “I was a fool” we are saying that our action was not thought out, we were not careful and we made a mistake.  However, it would be foolish to apply a 21^st Century Western cultured understanding to this word kasal (fool) as  this word has had a very fluid meaning throughout the last 500 years in the English language.  Many of our prominent lexicons and commentaries are over 100 years old and the commentator’s use of the word fool is quite different than it is today.  Yet we foolishly follow their lead.

 

We can look the word fool up in the Webster dictionary but that will only give us an English understanding of the word fool and not the Hebrew word kasal.  Throughout its history the English use of the word fool  has been applied to someone who was mental slow, like the town fool or  like a court jester. In Medieval times when a king needed some cheering up or entertainment he would call for the fool or the court jester who would entertain him with some of his antics and jokes. His forms of entertainment would vary from slap stick to skilled acrobatics.  He was often skilled in such entertainment arts as juggling, storytelling or ventriloquism. Many times he was a skill musician and would entertain the king and his court with serious and humorous songs.   By that definition I guess I paid my way through college acting like a fool as I worked as a ventriloquist. Here a fool is someone who uses unreasonable behavior and it is accepted because it is purely for entertainment purposes.  Is this what the writer of the Proverbs was warning against?

 

Our 21^st Century use of the word  fool may not be the best word to apply to kasal.  Hence we need to go back to the word kasal and examine its origins and development in the ancient Semitic languages.  As we examine this word as it was used in the Akkadian, and Aramaic language we begin to develop a picture of this word as it would have been used in the time of the writing of the Proverbs and that is one who sets himself up as a king when he has no authority whatsoever.

 

The ancient sages, in fact, left us clues to the nature of this word in the actually spelling of the word.  The word was written Kap, Samek and Lamed.  If the sages had written this word Chet, Sine, Lamed, or  Quf, Sine, Lamed or any number of combinations you would have words that sound very similar to kasal. So why did the sages and scribes choose these particular letters?   In my research for my doctoral dissertation I have learned that many times when the sages and scribes put certain Hebrew words into writing they specifically chose letters which would be a built in commentary to the word.  The sages and rabbis used to teach by giving certain meanings to phonetic sounds.  Each meaning or phonetic sound represented something that had to do with God’s relationship to man and man’s relationship to God.  Eventually these phonetic sounds found their way into an alphabet, specifically one developed by the Phoenicians who found it necessary to apply certain written symbols to these sounds in order to carry out their commerce and thus you had the development of the Phoenician or Canaanite script which is often call, quite wrongly, the Ancient Hebrew Script.

 

It was not until the captivity period that Ezra and his scribes realized that rabbis were using this script or the Canaanite symbols of the Alphabet to help explain certain aspects of our relationship to God.  The basis of my theory in my dissertation is that Ezra and his scribes realized that this Canaanite script was based on paganism and pagan gods.  The Aleph was shaped like a bull (ox) head and had its origins in the god Apis.  The last letter, the Tau was shaped like a cross and was the symbol for the goddess Tanit who received human sacrifice of babies.   In order to preserve the purity of the teachings of the sages and not eliminate this valuable learning tool of the meanings assigned to various phonetic sounds, Ezra and his scribes developed a script that was strictly  and specifically designed to express God’s relationship to man and man to God.  This became known as the square script or Assyrian Script (because it was developed during the Assyrian captivity) which is in use today.  For instance the Aleph was no longer shaped like the head of a bull but was made up of a Yod, Vav, Yod which spelled the name of God Jehovah.

 

So that brings us back to the word kasal (fool).  This word is spelled Kap, Samek, Lamed for a reason. The sages, either by divine inspiration or just knowing that languages do change over the years, built a commentary into each word for future generations to properly understand a word.  In this case the combination of the letter Kap tells us that a fool is one who is so convinced that his view or position is correct and that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong.  This is seen from the fact that the sages gave Kap  the idea of a king or ruler, one who has the final say in any issue. A fool is one who sets himself up as a king over a certain viewpoint (Kap) such that he shuts himself out for any other viewpoint (Samek) and becomes unteachable (Lamed).

 

The word for folly is ‘aval which is also a word for fool but is applied to one who argues for argument sake.  Its root meaning is quarrelsome.   Thus, what the Proverb is likely saying when it says: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him” is “Don’t try to answer someone who you know is so set in his viewpoint that he will not listen to any reason, someone who is unteachable and just trying to draw you into his folly, ‘aval or argument.  If you do you will become like him, you will become so firm in your position that you will not listen to reason, the only thing you want to accomplish is to prove you are right he is wrong and all you end up doing is getting angry and upset.

 

Note, the verse does not say: “Answer not the fool” but “Answer not the fool in his folly.  There is no problem in answering a fool, but when it becomes an ‘aval (folly) where he is just arguing to prove his own point and will not listen to another view or is unteachable, then don’t waste your time  and run the risk of becoming a kasal or fool yourself.