Intelligence ; by implication, an argument ; by extension, caprice
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The Hebrew noun tebunah names understanding, discernment, insight, or practical intelligence. Scripture attributes immeasurable understanding to God, presents wisdom and understanding as gifts from His mouth, and describes Solomon receiving breadth of understanding for royal responsibility.
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Full entry for תָּבוּן (H8394) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun tebunah names understanding, discernment, insight, or practical intelligence. Scripture attributes immeasurable understanding to God, presents wisdom and understanding as gifts from His mouth, and describes Solomon receiving breadth of understanding for royal responsibility.
The BSB source-word alignment has 42 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include of understanding (6), understanding (6), and understanding (5), by His understanding (3), ability (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 31:3. Its strongest book concentrations include Proverbs (19), Job (4), Psalms (4), Exodus (3).
The Hebrew noun tebunah names understanding, discernment, insight, or practical intelligence. Scripture attributes immeasurable understanding to God, presents wisdom and understanding as gifts from His mouth, and describes Solomon receiving breadth of understanding for royal responsibility. The same noun can describe the skilled competence needed for demanding craft work.
It can also be absent where a people lacks counsel or moral perception. The word therefore reaches beyond academic intelligence. It includes the capacity to perceive relationships, judge fitting action, and carry out a task wisely, but each passage supplies the sphere. Tebunah does not guarantee moral faithfulness merely because a person is talented, educated, eloquent, or strategically effective.
Nor does its praise license contempt for people with cognitive disabilities, limited schooling, language barriers, or different learning styles. Responsible teaching receives understanding as a gift to be sought and practiced in humility. It tests insight by truth, justice, teachability, and faithful action rather than by status, speed, confidence, or claims of secret revelation.
Tebunah describes God-given discernment, royal breadth of understanding, skilled competence, wise speech, and insight that may be lacking when counsel and faithful perception fail.
And God gave Solomon wisdom, exceedingly deep insight, and understanding beyond measure, like the sand on the seashore.
God gives Solomon wisdom, very great insight, and breadth of understanding for his royal calling.
He was the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a craftsman in bronze. Huram had great skill, understanding, and knowledge for every kind of bronze work. So he came to King Solomon and carried out all his work.
Hiram is filled with wisdom, understanding, and skill for the bronze work commissioned by Solomon.
Israel is a nation devoid of counsel, with no understanding among them.
Moses' song describes a nation lacking counsel and without understanding in its response to God.
For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Proverbs locates wisdom, knowledge, and understanding in the Lord and in what He gives.
My mouth will impart wisdom, and the meditation of my heart will bring understanding.
The psalmist promises words of wisdom and meditation shaped by understanding for all peoples.
Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit.
The psalm praises the Lord as great and mighty, whose understanding has no limit.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Practical discernment and wise reasoning applied to concrete situations, distinct from abstract wisdom
Practical discernment and wise reasoning applied to concrete situations, distinct from abstract wisdom
intelligence; by implication, an argument; by extension, caprice BDB: understanding Usage: discretion, reason, skilfulness, understanding, wisdom.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 43 lexical occurrence verses.
תָּבוּן is built from this root:
Understanding reflects the ability to perceive moral and spiritual truth.Proverbs 10:23
True wisdom manifests in careful speech and restraint.Proverbs 11:12
Discernment enables the learner to recognize deceptive temptations.Proverbs 5:1-6
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Tebunah presents understanding as both gift and responsibility. Solomon receives broad understanding for kingship, and Hiram's practical competence serves complex bronze work. These passages dignify governance and skilled labor, yet later narratives also show that gifted people remain morally accountable. Proverbs directs learners to the Lord as the source of wisdom and understanding, so discernment is received rather than possessed as self-validating superiority.
Psalm 49 joins understanding to meditation and public speech, while Psalm 147 reserves immeasurable understanding for God. Deuteronomy can name its absence where counsel and covenant perception fail. Faithful application therefore values study, craft, experience, prayer, counsel, and correction together. It asks whether supposed insight produces truthful, just, patient, and fitting action.
It does not rank human dignity by education, processing speed, disability, occupation, or verbal fluency. It also refuses the claim that a leader's intelligence places decisions beyond scrutiny. Human understanding is partial and accountable; God's is without limit. Communities pursue tebunah through attentive learning and wise practice while remaining open to evidence, correction, and the needs of those affected by their judgments.
Prov.2.6
Tebunah is a Hebrew noun in the semantic field of understanding and discernment. Its collocation with wisdom, knowledge, counsel, skill, heart, and meditation helps locate intellectual, moral, practical, or rhetorical emphasis in a given passage.
New Testament teaching likewise values wisdom, renewed judgment, skilled service, tested teaching, and humble recognition of partial knowledge. Those themes may be compared canonically without claiming that every Greek term for understanding exactly reproduces tebunah.