beetle Summary and Overview

(Heb. hargol, meaning "leaper"). Mention of it is made only in Lev. 11:22, where it is obvious the word cannot mean properly the beetle. It denotes some winged creeper with at least four feet, "which has legs above its feet, to leap withal." The description plainly points to the locust (q.v.). This has been an article of food from the earliest times in the East to the present day. The word is rendered "cricket" in the Revised Version.

[LOCUST]

BEE'TLE . Lev 11:21-22. Beetles have not "legs above their feet to leap withal upon the earth," neither are they ever eaten by man. From the connection, the word probably indicates an insect of the Locust family, which see. The Egyptians worshipped the beetle (scarabus) as a symbol of fertility and immortality.

Beetle, chargol, only in Leviticus 11:21-22; mentioned between the locust and grasshopper, and among "flying creeping things that go upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth." From an Arabic root, "to leap". The Septuagint translates it the "serpent killer," a kind of locust not having wings. A species of truxalis, some think, one of the orthoptera, like the locust, but with elongated, projecting, conical forehead; carnivorous. It keeps down the multiplication of noisome insects. The beetle was not an article of food, the locust was. (See LOCUST.) A "beetle" cannot therefore be meant.