CHAGAB (=n) a winged edible locust (Lev.
xi. 22 ; Num. xiii. 33 ; Is. xl. 22 ; Eccles. xii. 5 ; and 2 Chron. vii. 13). In all these passages the Sept. reads impis, Vulgate /ocusta, and English crasshopper, except the last, where the English has locusts. The manifest impropriety of translating this word `grasshoppers' in Lev. xi. 22, accord ing to the English acceptation of the word, appears from this, that the mr, is placed there among the `flying creeping things.' In all the other instances it most probably denotes a species of locust, and so our translators have properly rendered it in 2 Chron. vii. 13. Oedman infers, from its being so often used for this purpose, that it denotes the smallest species of locust ; but in the passage in Chronicles voracity seems its chief characteristic. An Arabic root, signifying ` to hide,' is usually ad duced, because it is said that locusts fly in such crowds as to hide the sun ; but others say, from their hiding the ground when they alight. Even
Parkhurst demurs, that ` to veil the sun and darken the air is not peculiar to any kind of locust ;' and with no better success proposes to understand the cucullated, or hooded, or veiled species of locust. Tychsen suggests the G. coronalus.
Fiirst (following Rashi) proposes to understand the word in Eccl. xii. 5, as referring to the sola 7111711 150Migenalt SpinOSUM, thence to the membrum virile, and the whole passage as describing the pass ing away of all desire for carnal pleasures, and this view is adopted by Mead (Med. Sac. p. 44), Des voeux, Hitzig, and others. But why resort to such an explanation when the ordinary meaning of the word gives as good a sense (not to say a better) ? The day ` when the locust shall be loathed' is the day when even what in health is esteemed a deli cacy, will be refused (See Ginsburg's .Ecclesiastes, P.