Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 34:7
He had wrought folly in Israel. A fixed idiom for a grave sexual offense, not an improvised phrase.
Genesis 34:7, in every translation this tool compares.
English has set phrases for serious wrongdoing, crossed a line, broken faith, immediately recognizable as formal condemnation rather than casual complaint. Wrought folly in Israel is exactly that kind of fixed idiom in Hebrew, recurring with the same weight in other serious violation narratives.
Because Dinah's brothers describe what happened to her using a fixed Hebrew idiom, wrought folly in Israel, that recurs as the standard phrase for a serious sexual or covenant-breaking offense elsewhere in the Bible, marking this as formal, recognized language rather than an improvised reaction.
Every version reads some form of folly or outrage in Israel, correctly conveying moral severity, but without necessarily flagging that this is a recurring, semi-technical phrase rather than an ad hoc description invented for this one scene.
נְבָלָה בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל nevalah be-Yisrael (idiom) · H5039
Nevalah, folly, with the verb asah, to do or work, forms a set idiom, la'asot nevalah, that recurs for grave sexual violations and covenant betrayals at Deuteronomy 22:21, Judges 19:23-24 and 20:6, 10, and 2 Samuel 13:12, describing Tamar's assault in nearly identical language to what is used here for Dinah. The phrase functions as recognized, almost legal, vocabulary for a category of serious offense, not a one-off expression of anger.
English readers meeting wrought folly hear an old-fashioned, almost mild phrase, since modern folly suggests foolishness rather than grave wrongdoing, so the weight the fixed Hebrew idiom carries by recurring in other serious assault and covenant-violation narratives is easy to miss entirely.
When a phrase describing wrongdoing recurs verbatim or nearly verbatim across several separate narratives, treat it as a recognized category or fixed idiom, not as spontaneous language invented fresh each time. Its recurrence is itself evidence of how seriously the culture classified the offense.
Every version gets the basic sense right, a grave wrong. What's worth flagging is that this specific phrase is a recurring formula across several assault and covenant-violation narratives, evidence of how the offense was categorized, not merely how one narrator happened to phrase his outrage.
- The same idiom: Deuteronomy 22:21; Judges 19:23-24; 20:6, 10; 2 Samuel 13:12
- Nevalah's core sense of moral disgrace or outrage: standard BDB and HALOT entries
