Hebrew Word Study – Wisdom – Shakal  שכל Shin Kap Lamed

Proverbs 8:1 “Does not wisdom call and understanding lift up her voice?”

Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from the fruit and ate and she also gave to her husband who was with her and he ate.”

Matthew 7:22  “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?”

There are three words for wisdom in Hebrew. The most common word that is rendered as wisdom is chakem and is not only found in the Bible but is a reoccurring word within extra-Biblical literature.  Wisdom is an extremely important word in the Bible. Solomon speaks often of it.  We see it in the New Testament.  We learn in James 1:5 that if we lack wisdom we only need to ask of God and He will give it. Yet, we really spend little time analyzing this word and what it meant in an ancient Semitic culture. 

Wisdom in a Biblical sense is so very much more than wisdom as defined in our English language.  To us, wisdom is simply knowledge, information, and understanding.  Yet, to the writers of the Bible wisdom was a relationship word.  

First, we need to recognize there are three words for wisdom in the Hebrew.  Solomon uses the word chakemah in Proverbs 8:1 and puts it in the feminine form.  Why is wisdom considered feminine?  You can speculate as well as I can.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that women are considered more spiritual than men.  Or maybe it has to do with the fact that a woman is the one who gives birth to a new life and it is wisdom that gives birth to new ideas and insights in the spirit realm.  Yet, many rabbis feel that it is because this is a wisdom that comes from intimacy and knowing one’s heart as a wife is intimate with her husband, and in that intimacy, she knows and understands his heart as he does her heart. 

Then we have the word for as found in Genesis 3:6 which speaks of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  In the Book of Enoch it is called the tree of wisdom. So what was so bad about learning wisdom.   The word used here in the Book of Enoch is the Aramaic word that is equivalent to the Hebrew word for another type of wisdom and is the word used in Genesis 3:6 when Eve saw that the fruit of the tree was desirable to make one wise.  This is the second word for wisdom which is shakal.  Both chakemah and shakal mean wisdom and if you look them up in the lexicon it will tell you it means wisdom.  However, they are both spelled differently.   Chakem is spelled  Cheth, Kap, and Final Mem.   This is a wisdom that comes from joining yourself with God and allowing Him to fill you with his hidden knowledge.  This is the wisdom that Solomon asked for, the hidden knowledge of God.  However, he asked for more than just the hidden knowledge of God, he wanted to gain this knowledge through an intimacy with God. 

In Matthew 7:22 Jesus tells us that many will say: “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out devils in your name, done great and mighty things in your name and he will say depart from me, I never knew you.”   This is our third word in Hebrew and Aramaic for wisdom. It is the word ginosko in Greek for knowing. This is the same word Mary used when she said was told she would have a child and asked how could that be as she knew no man.  In other words, she had no intimate relationship with a man.  The Aramaic word used here is yida like the Hebrew word yada which is to gain knowledge by knowing someone intimately. This is usually a wisdom or knowledge that comes from a love relationship as well as a business relationship. It may be one or the other or both. Sometimes you see a married couple and wonder if they are really in love or just married for convenience’s sake. You don’t know if it is a shacal relationship or a chakam relationship, so you give it the benefit of the doubt and call it a yida relationship, it may be one or the other but we will assume it is both.  

Yida or yada in the Hebrew differs from chakem as chakem means a knowledge gained through an intimacy filled with love where yida means that but it also carries the idea of shacal as well.  Let’s put it this way a man can have a business partner who shares many of the intimate details of the business with him but she does not share the intimate details of his heart.  That is shakal the wisdom Eve sought in the garden. Now when a man shares an intimate relationship with his wife out of love, she will share the intimate details of her heart with him and he with her.  That is chakam, which is the wisdom Solomon sought and the wisdom he speaks about in Proverbs like in Proverbs 8:1. Read the Book of Proverbs and when you see the word wisdom think of knowledge of one’s heart through an intimate relationship and see if that doesn’t help you in your understanding of what Solomon is talking about.

Now let’s say that this wife not only shares in a love relationship with her husband and has a chakem or knowledge of his heart, but she is also his business partner. They run a business together and she also shares the intimate details of that business as well, she shares a  shakal with him. However, in that case she is not only sharing the intimate secrets of her husband’s heart but the secrets of his business as well. Here we would use the word yada.   So when Jesus said many will say Lord Lord and he tells them to depart that he never knew them He is saying that they never knew his heart nor the secrets of his kingdom. There was no intimacy with Him either in love or the business of running the kingdom.

Yes, even today as in Jesus’ day, many are taking of the fruit of wisdom but have no relationship with God, their wisdom is shakal.  Just because someone performs signs and wonders, great miracles, and casts out devils and prophesied does not mean they have a chakam intimate relationship with God.  In fact, if they do signs and wonders without that relationship, they are taking of forbidden fruit or knowledge that should only be shared through a loving relationship with God. So now that does not have yida, the wisdom of God’s heart, or His business affairs. 

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