What Does 1 Corinthians 1:20 Mean?
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the arguer of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?THE KEY
The “wise” and the world’s “wisdom” grow from the same Greek root, placing both the people and the system they represent under God’s scrutiny.
THE MEANING
The experts, interpreters, and arguers of your age do not stand beyond God’s measure. The wisdom the world trusts can be exposed as foolishness, however impressive its claims sound.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that learning, religious expertise, or winning an argument guarantees access to truth. This verse separates status from truth: the wisdom a culture prizes can be shown foolish.
THE ROOT
σοφός
sophos
GROWS FROM
σοφ-
soph-
Wise or skilled.
The “wise” person and the world’s “wisdom” share this root: σοφός and σοφία are two forms of the same claim to understanding. The verse asks where the people who embody that claim stand when God exposes the wisdom itself.
ALSO GROWS
sophia: Wisdom, skill.
σοφία
This is the same root in “wisdom of this world,” linking the people called wise to the system whose judgment God overturns.
sophizō: Make wise; teach or devise skillfully.
σοφίζω
This verb shows the root can describe wisdom as something cultivated or devised, not merely a status someone possesses.
ἐμώρανεν
emōranen
GROWS FROM
μωρ-
mōr-
Dull or foolish; the word family describes foolishness and making foolish.
“made foolish” in this verse is emōranen. The verb says God makes the world’s wisdom foolish: its claim is exposed as unable to deliver what it promises. The same word family appears as “foolishness” in the next verse, where what people judge foolish is set against human wisdom.
ALSO GROWS
mōros: Foolish, dull.
μωρός
This adjective names the quality the world’s wisdom is shown to have when measured by God.
mōria: Foolishness.
μωρία
This noun carries the same root into the next verse’s reversal, where God’s apparent foolishness surpasses human wisdom.
THE PATTERN
God exposes human wisdom when it mistakes status, cleverness, or control for truth.
Therefore, behold, I will add again to do a wonder among this people, even a wonder and a marvel; for the wisdom of their wise ones will lose its way, and the discernment of their discerning ones will be hidden.He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the shrewd is hurried headlong.For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, He catches the wise in their own craftiness.THE THREAD
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than humankind, and the weakness of God is stronger than humankind.“Made foolish” and “foolishness” share the Greek μωρ- word family. This verse sharpens the reversal: what human judgment calls foolish can exceed human wisdom.
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