24 Bible Verses About Fools

Psalm 14:1

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.”

Reflection: The fool denies God “in his heart,” and the rest of the verse moves straight to conduct: “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds.” In the next verses the LORD looks down “to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God,” and finds that “they have all turned aside.” Psalm 53 opens with the same line.

1 Samuel 25:25

“Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.”

Reflection: Nabal, a rich sheep owner, had refused food to David’s men at shearing time with the question “Who is David?” (1 Samuel 25:10). His wife Abigail, without telling him, loaded donkeys with bread, wine and meat and rode out to meet David, and this is how she spoke of her husband. His name is the Hebrew word for fool. About ten days after he heard what she had done, “the LORD struck Nabal, and he died” (1 Samuel 25:38).

Proverbs 1:7

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Reflection: The verse closes the prologue of Proverbs, which says the proverbs were gathered “to know wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:2). Verse 7 names the same two things as what fools despise, and places the fear of the LORD at the start of knowledge. The next verse begins the father’s address to his son: “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction.”

Romans 1:22

“Claiming to be wise, they became fools,”

Reflection: Paul is writing of people who “knew God” but “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). The next verse names what their folly was: they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Earlier in the passage Paul says what can be known about God “is plain to them” in the things that have been made, “so they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

Luke 12:20

“But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”

Reflection: A man in the crowd had asked Jesus to make his brother divide the inheritance, and Jesus answered with a warning against covetousness and this parable. The rich man plans bigger barns and tells his soul to “relax, eat, drink, be merry,” and God’s verdict ends his plans the same night. Jesus draws the point in the next verse: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Matthew 25:2-3

“Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them,”

Reflection: All ten virgins in the parable carry lamps, all wait for a bridegroom who is delayed, and all fall asleep. What marks the foolish five is that they bring no oil, while the wise “took flasks of oil with their lamps” (Matthew 25:4). At midnight the foolish have to go and buy, and when they come back the door is shut and the bridegroom answers, “I do not know you.” Jesus ends the parable: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13).

Proverbs 12:15

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Reflection: The fool judges his own way right by his own standard. The wise man in the second line is marked by listening, and the next verse adds another sign of the fool: “The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.”

Proverbs 28:26

“Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”

Reflection: The contrast is between two things a person can rely on: his own mind, and wisdom that he walks in. The King James Version renders the first line “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” The second line promises the one who walks in wisdom that he “will be delivered.”

Proverbs 15:5

“A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent.”

Reflection: Proverbs is framed as a father teaching his son (Proverbs 1:8), and the fool here despises the very thing the book offers, a father’s instruction. The prudent person in the second line is “whoever heeds reproof,” accepting correction as well as instruction.

Proverbs 18:2

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”

Reflection: Understanding gives the fool no pleasure; what he enjoys is hearing himself. The verse before it describes a similar person: “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.”

Proverbs 17:28

“Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.”

Reflection: The verse before states the general rule: “Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.” Applied to a fool, closed lips are enough for him to be “considered wise” and “deemed intelligent.” Two verses later, the fool of Proverbs 18:2 does the opposite of keeping silent: he takes no pleasure in understanding, “but only in expressing his opinion.”

Proverbs 10:8

“The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin.”

Reflection: The wise person receives commands; the fool keeps talking. Two verses later the same line returns word for word, “a babbling fool will come to ruin,” this time beside the man who “winks the eye” and “causes trouble” (Proverbs 10:10).

Proverbs 17:16

“Why should a fool have money in his hand to buy wisdom, when he has no sense?”

Reflection: The question is put with some irony: the fool has the money in his hand, and what he lacks is sense. A few verses earlier the chapter says meeting a fool is worse than meeting a bear: “Let a man meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs rather than a fool in his folly” (Proverbs 17:12).

Proverbs 10:23

“Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”

Reflection: The proverb contrasts what each person enjoys. Wrongdoing amuses the fool the way wisdom pleases the man of understanding. Proverbs 13:19 makes a related point from the other side: “to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools.”

Proverbs 26:11

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.”

Reflection: The simile is meant to disgust, and the fool’s fault in it is repetition: he goes back to the same folly. Second Peter 2:22 quotes the proverb about people who had “escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and were “again entangled in them.”

Matthew 7:26

“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Reflection: The parable of the two builders ends the Sermon on the Mount; the next verse after it reads “when Jesus finished these sayings” (Matthew 7:28). The two builders both hear Jesus’ words, and the same rain, floods and wind beat on both houses; what makes one man foolish is that he hears and does not act. His house “fell, and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:27).

Proverbs 29:11

“A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

Reflection: The fool lets all of his temper out, and the wise man “quietly holds it back.” Two verses earlier the same chapter shows the fool in an argument, where he “only rages and laughs” (Proverbs 29:9).

Ecclesiastes 7:9

“Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools.”

Reflection: The Preacher has just said that “the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). The warning is against being quick to anger, and the reason given is where anger settles: “in the heart of fools.” Earlier in the chapter the Preacher compares “the laughter of the fools” to “the crackling of thorns under a pot” (Ecclesiastes 7:6).

Proverbs 20:3

“It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling.”

Reflection: Staying out of a fight is counted an honor, and quarrelling is what every fool does. Proverbs 17:14 gives practical advice to the same end: “The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.”

Proverbs 26:4

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.”

Reflection: This verse and the next stand side by side and give opposite advice, each with its own reason. The danger named here is to the one answering: an answer pitched at the fool’s level makes the one who gives it “like him.”

Proverbs 26:5

“Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

Reflection: The reason for answering this time is the fool’s own danger: left unanswered, he stays “wise in his own eyes.” The same chapter ranks that state below the fool’s: “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 26:12).

Proverbs 13:20

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”

Reflection: Company shapes a person in both directions. Walking with the wise makes a person wise, and the one who keeps company with fools is the one who “will suffer harm.”

Matthew 5:22

“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Reflection: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the command against murder (Matthew 5:21) and extends it to anger and to insults spoken to a brother. The Greek word behind “You fool!” is moros. Jesus himself uses the same word of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:17, “You blind fools!”, and the Gospel does not explain how the two fit together.

1 Corinthians 3:18

“Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.”

Reflection: Paul is writing to a church divided over its teachers, where some said “I follow Paul” and others “I follow Apollos” (1 Corinthians 3:4), and he turns the word fool around. The next verse gives his reason: “For the wisdom of this world is folly with God,” followed by two Old Testament quotations. Earlier in the letter he writes that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” and that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:25, 27).