אִוֶּ֫לֶת
folly
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 14 times (56%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 11 times (44%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 25 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H200 appears — 24 distinct verses across 2 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Psalms 2 verses
Proverbs 22 verses
- Proverbs 5:23 אִוַּלְתּ֣/וֹ n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms He will die for lack of instruction. In the greatness of his folly, he will go astray.
- Proverbs 12:23 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs A prudent man keeps his knowledge, But the hearts of fools proclaim foolishness.
- Proverbs 13:16 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs Every prudent man acts from knowledge, But a fool exposes folly.
- Proverbs 14:1 וְ֝/אִוֶּ֗לֶת conj + n c fs Every wise woman builds her house, But the foolish one tears it down with her own hands.
- Proverbs 14:8 וְ/אִוֶּ֖לֶת conj + n c fs cs The wisdom of the prudent is to think about his way, But the folly of fools is deceit.
- Proverbs 14:17 אִוֶּ֑לֶת n c fs He who is quick to become angry will commit folly, And a crafty man is hated.
- Proverbs 14:18 אִוֶּ֑לֶת n c fs The simple inherit folly, But the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
- Proverbs 14:24 אִוֶּ֖לֶת אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs cs n c fs The crown of the wise is their riches, But the folly of fools crowns them with folly.
- Proverbs 14:29 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs He who is slow to anger has great understanding, But he who has a quick temper displays folly.
- Proverbs 15:2 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, But the mouth of fools gush out folly.
- Proverbs 15:14 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs The heart of one who has understanding seeks knowledge, But the mouths of fools feed on folly.
- Proverbs 15:21 אִ֭וֶּלֶת n c fs Folly is joy to one who is void of wisdom, But a man of understanding keeps his way straight.
- Proverbs 16:22 אִוֶּֽלֶת n c fs Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it, But the punishment of fools is their folly.
- Proverbs 17:12 בְּ/אִוַּלְתּֽ/וֹ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms Let a bear robbed of her cubs meet a man, Rather than a fool in his folly.
- Proverbs 18:13 אִוֶּ֥לֶת n c fs He who gives answer before he hears, That is folly and shame to him.
- Proverbs 19:3 אִוֶּ֣לֶת n c fs cs The foolishness of man subverts his way; His heart rages against Yahweh.
- Proverbs 22:15 אִ֭וֶּלֶת n c fs Folly is bound up in the heart of a child: The rod of discipline drives it far from him.
- Proverbs 24:9 אִוֶּ֣לֶת n c fs The schemes of folly are sin. The mocker is detested by men.
- Proverbs 26:4 כְּ/אִוַּלְתּ֑/וֹ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms Don't answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.
- Proverbs 26:5 כְּ/אִוַּלְתּ֑/וֹ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.
- Proverbs 26:11 בְ/אִוַּלְתּֽ/וֹ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms As a dog that returns to his vomit, So is a fool who repeats his folly.
- Proverbs 27:22 אִוַּלְתּֽ/וֹ n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with grain, Yet his foolishness will not be removed from him.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“folly” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun אולת (ʼivveleth). More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Proverbs. It appears 24 verses across 2 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Scripture first uses it in Psalms 38:5. It shares a root with אויל and אולי. See the sense tree, 24-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H200 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 24
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 24 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,282
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,282 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 24 occurrences in the concordance →
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 24 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 24 verses · 100%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Foolishness 9×, Folly 8×, Is folly 3×
- American Standard Version: Folly 11×, Foolishness 6×, According to his folly 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Folly 15×, According to his folly 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Folly 14×, Folly of 3×, Is folly 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H200 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H200 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H200 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H200 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- foolishness, folly
Word origin
n.f. folly.—abs. Pr 12:23 +; cstr. 14:8 +; sf. אִוַּלְתִּי ψ 38:6, etc.;—folly, special product of כְּסִילִים (v. כֶּסֶל) Pr 12:23 + (12 times); c. פְּתָאִים Pr 14:18; c.אֱוִלִים only 16:22; 27:22 (cf. 14:24) for alliteration. It is bound up in mind of boy, to be removed only by rod of discipline Pr 22:15; א׳ personif. tears down house built by חַכְמוֹת נָשִׁים Pr 14:1; it is contrasted with תְּבוּנָה Pr 14:29; 15:21.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אויל (ʼĕvîyl) (H191) — fool.
Forms in the corpus
The 15 distinct written forms H200 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H200, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 24 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 24 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
