Cunning Defined

NOUN

1[MASS NOUN] Skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit.

Thesaurus:

[Nouns] cunning, craft; cunningness, craftiness; subtlety, artificiality; maneuvering; temporization; circumvention.
chicane, chicanery; sharp practice, knavery, jugglery; concealment [more]; guile, doubling, duplicity (falsehood) [more]; foul play.
diplomacy, politics; Machiavelism; jobbery, backstairs influence.
art, artifice; device, machination; plot (plan) [more]; maneuver, stratagem, dodge, artful dodge, wile; trick, trickery (deception) [more]; ruse, ruse de guerre; finesse, side blow, thin end of the wedge, shift, go by, subterfuge, evasion; white lie (untruth) [more]; juggle, tour de force; tricks of the trade, tricks upon travelers; espieglerie; net, trap [more].
Ulysses, Machiavel, sly boots, sly dog, fox, reynard; dodger, Artful Dodger [Dickens], smooth operator, sweet talker; Yankee; intriguer, intrigant; spin doctor, schemer [more].

Cunning in Scripture

You will be hard-pressed to find cunning as an adjective, verb or even a noun (such as the synonyms above), but the Bible puts forth many examples of cunning described by other more familiar words.

Let me ask you this: look at the list above and what comes to mind? Do you see a face of someone in the news or a cunning person in your workplace? Perhaps you imagine the cunning cohort in politics who would just as soon stab someone in the back as tell the truth to the people.

Sometimes cunning in the Bible is used to describe a specialized understanding of craftsmanship. After all, who today understands the complexity of the US elections or the craft of passing legislation no one understands? We look to the cunning businessman or woman of the world with both envy and disdain. How could they have become so cunning as to achieve their high success? What lies have they sold to millions who will elect them?

The Hebrew word for cunning may be somewhat familiar, for it has many contexts.

יָדַע yâdaʻ

We find it from near the beginning: to know, learn to know, to perceive, to perceive and see, find out and discern,
to discriminate, distinguish 2.

The pivotal questions are: Who is the source of the knowledge? Is their word true or a well-crafted lie?

“Consider the source’ was once a common-sense evaluation now given up to a retractable headline truism.

Genesis 3:5-6

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

• What is the source?

You will find the cunning one in verse 1:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

Satan is darkness in the guise of light. The serpent seems to be for us, even an advocate for us against God. He fits as needed all the descriptions of cunning or crafty: subtle, shrewd, crafty, sly, sensible, prudent…

‘Did God actually say…?” Satan asks us time and time again?

• Is the word truth or a well-crafted lie?

For God knows that when you eat of it… you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw … that the tree was to be desired to make one wise…

The command is questioned. Truth is suppressed and twisted into untruth. So how like God do you feel now? Is our knowledge of good and evil the answer to our eternal life? For satan claimed: ‘But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”‘ – Gen 3:4

The question of proverbial wisdom is appropriately about the source:

• Is it from God?
• Is this Truth?
• Or has Satan twisted fact into lies that may seem like truth?

Proverbs include warnings of the cunning

Solomon reminds us here of God as the source of truth.

Proverbs 2:

⁶ For the Lord gives wisdom;
    from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
⁷ he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
    he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
⁸ guarding the paths of justice
    and watching over the way of his saints.

…

¹¹ discretion will watch over you,
    understanding will guard you,
¹² delivering you from the way of evil,
    from men of perverted speech,
¹³ who forsake the paths of uprightness
    to walk in the ways of darkness,
¹⁴ who rejoice in doing evil
    and delight in the perverseness of evil,
¹⁵ men whose paths are crooked,
    and who are devious in their ways.

Why the warning against those cunning men and women who plan evil?

I can think of several examples of those who sought to trap or use righteous men to achieve their goals. Among these are Ahab, king of Samaria making a pact with Jehoshaphat of Judah. 2 Chronicles 18 has a complex and cunning plot of two leaders described as doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord. 1 Kings 21 describes a plot of Jezebel, evil wife of evil King Ahab, cunningly taking the land of another man by a carefully laid out plan of deceit. Their purpose to rule puts them against God’s greatest Prophet of the Old Testament, Elijah.

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Another example of cunning appears in the early days of the New Testament church, one of another powerful leader of sorts, one of whom his disciples said, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.”

More about his choice when confronted by the power of the Holy Spirit in our next word to the cunning.

To be continued…