זָרָא

From the study of Numbers 11:20

Range of meaning

Found only here in the Hebrew Bible. It is usually linked to the root z-w-r / z-r-ʾ, “be loathsome, be strange or offensive” (compare Job 19:17, “my breath is repulsive to my wife”). Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give “loathing, nausea”: physical revulsion, especially at food.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and ESV/NASB have “loathsome”, NIV “you loathe it”, BSB “makes you nauseous”, NLT “sick of it”, YLT “an abomination”. All except YLT keep it in the body and the stomach. YLT's “abomination” suggests the separate Hebrew word for something ritually or morally detestable (toʿevah), which is not what this word means.

How it drifted

Only YLT drifts, by picking a word that in English Bibles carries the sense of cultic or moral offense.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Septuagint translates it εἰς χολέραν, “into cholera”. In Greek medical writing that word meant a violent stomach illness with vomiting and diarrhoea, not the modern bacterial disease. The Vulgate has in nauseam, “into nausea”. Both ancient translations read the word as physical sickness.