ḤOkhmah
ḤOKHMAH. The Hebrew feminine noun ḥokhmah (variation of ḥokhmot, Prv. 1:20, 9:1, 14:1) reflects a common Semitic root, attested in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Arabic. Ḥokhmah is conventionally rendered as "wisdom," though biblical usage has a broader semantic range than the English term. In itself an ethically and religiously neutral term, ḥokhmah denotes, along with intellectual prowess and sagacity, the mastery of crafts ranging from such concrete skills as spinning cloth (Ex. 35:25), working in metal, wood, and stone (Ex. 31:3–6), and navigation (Ps. 107:27), to the more subtle arts of dream interpretation (Gn. 41:8), ritual wailing (Jer. 9:16), sorcery (Is. 3:3), epigrammatic speech (1 Kgs. 5:9–14), diplomacy and court politics (2 Sm. 20:16–22; 1 Kgs. 2:6, 2:9; cf. Eccl. 9:13–18;), and the exercise of kingship (1 Kgs. 5:26; cf. the ironic use in Is. 10:13 and Ez. 28:4–5, 28:12).
ḤOkhmah in Biblical Piety
Human ḥokhmah is also interpreted as and identified with piety (literally "fear of the Lord") in the so-called wisdom literature (i.e., Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon) and elsewhere (e.g., Is. 33:6). In Proverbs, ḥokhmah indicates ethical virtue and character as well as practical accomplishment: wisdom and its antithesis, folly, are equivalent to the paralleled righteousness and wickedness found in other proverbs.
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