CHARGOL (kar'01), (Heb. char'gol, serpent-fighter, A. V. beetle found only in Lev. xi :22. R. V., cricket).
This word cannot mean the beetle. No species of scarabzeus was ever used as food by the Jews. or perhaps any other nation. Nor does any known species answer to the generic description given in the preceding verse. It is plain that the chargol is some winged creature, which has at least four feet, which leaps with its two hind jointed legs, and which we might expect, from the permission, to find actually used as This description agrees exactly with the locust tribe of insects, which are well known to have been eaten by the common people in the East from the earliest times to the present day.
In attempting to ascertain the particular species of locust intended by the word `chargol.' great deference is due to the term adopted by the Sep tuagint and repeated by Jerome, which is evi dently a creature that fights with serpents. In applicable as such a description might seem to be to the habits of any known species of locust, it may, nevertheless, help to identify the species of which we are in search. Now the ancients have certainly referred to the notion of locusts fighting with serpents (Aristot. Hist. Anini. ix :9; Plin. Hist. Nat. xi:35). Although this notion is justly discarded by Cuvier (Grandsagne's edition of Pliny, Parisiis, 1828. p. 451, note), yet it may
serve to account for the application of the term serpent-fighters to a species of locust. For this word instantly suggests a reference to the ichneu mon, the celebrated destroyer of serpents and other vermin ; and it is remarkable that Hesychius, in the second century, applies the word douquixos serpent-fighting, both to the ichneumon, and a species of locust having no wings.
Now there is one kind of locusts, the genus truxalis (fierce or cruel), inhabiting Africa and China, and comprehending many species, which hunts and preys upon insects. It is also called the truxalis nasutus, or long-nosed. May not, then, this winged, leaping, insectivorous locust, and its various species, be the chargol ? It may be observed that it is no objection to the former and more probable supposition, that a creature which lives upon other insects should be allowed as food to the Jews, contrary to the general principle of the Mosaic law in regard to birds and quadrupeds, this having been unques tionably the case with regard to many species of fish coming within the regulation of having 'fins and scales.' and known to exist in Palestine at the present time—as the perch, carp, barbel. etc.