Foolishness and Nobility Are Similar

The Hebrew word for “fool” is very close to the Hebrew for “noble,” with only one letter different, and it is sometimes only in the outcome of their lives that the people considered noble by the people of their time are shown up as fools or pronounced as fools by God. David’s wife Abigail was originally married to the more obvious type of fool, and she described her first husband as a “worthless man” who lived up to his name, Nabal, which means “son of Belial,” or fool (1 Sam 25:25). 

By contrast, the farmer called a fool by Jesus (“You fool. This very night your soul is required of…