^{10 Iyyar 5781 | April 22, 2021}

Lovers of language are delighted by contranyms – words with two contradictory meanings. In English, Genesis 2:24 tells a man to leave his parents and cleave to his wife, while we also use the word “cleave” to mean “separate.” In Hebrew, the text of Genesis 2:24 uses the familiar root davek which more uniformly means “stick to.”

The book of Proverbs features 13 mentions of a particularly confounding word, one that is translated consistently by Koren as “prudent,” where JPS gives the same root at least three different translations in Proverbs, including prudent, shrewdness and clever. The root in question, ‘-r-m, “ערם”, also has a simple meaning that would appear to be the opposite – nakedness.

In today’s chapter, the Koren edition renders: “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find knowledge and discretion” (8:12).

The JPS translation similarly translates the verse, swapping “foresight” as the final word.

This translation of our verse fits the approaches of most medieval commentaries . Prudence was an archetype of virtue in medieval and Renaissance art, represented by Titian as tripartite: Prudence learns from the past, acts wisely in the present, using foresight to make plans for the future.

In contrast, the medieval Jewish commentators only saw two possible translations of orma “עָרמה” – nakedness, or cunning. Their source is its first appearance in the Bible, which cements its identity as a contranym with dramatic wordplay. At the very beginning of the Torah, the serpent in Genesis 3:1 is described as arum, “ערוּם מִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה” (JPS translates this as “shrewdest of all beings”.) The serpent, through his cunning and guile, tricks the man and the woman into sinning, after which they notice they are arumim (“וַיֵּ֣דְע֔וּ כִּ֥י עֵֽירֻמִּ֖ם הֵ֑ם” – Genesis 3:7), that is, naked.

Even to a casual reader, the wordplay in Genesis must stand out. We will see that later on in Proverbs, the Hebrew root seems to mean variations on “cunning” which is not precisely the same as “prudent.”

The 19th century commentator Malbim had his own take on the word, writing on 8:12, “Orma is the strength in a soul to weigh each action before doing it.”

Malbim tells us that a person can possess the trait of orma and use it for good or for ill, but one who has wisdom will think through his actions and make the wisest choice. Without wisdom, a person who uses the trait of “orma” will use it generally for evil.

Mathematically speaking:

The author of Proverbs very clearly sees this trait as laudable – in future chapters, we will get a fuller picture of how a person can incorporate orma into a life of wisdom.