Hebrew word · H2826
חָשַׁל
hanecheshalim
be feeble
A Niphal (passive) participle of ḥashal, found only here in Biblical Hebrew. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give "be weakened, enfeebled" and take the plural participle as "those who are worn out, stragglers".
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Deuteronomy 25:18
- Range of meaning
A Niphal (passive) participle of ḥashal, found only here in Biblical Hebrew. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give "be weakened, enfeebled" and take the plural participle as "those who are worn out, stragglers". An Aramaic word ḥashal, "to beat fine, crush, shatter" (Dan 2:40; also in later Aramaic for hammering metal thin), points to the picture of people "beaten thin" or crushed by exhaustion.
- Against the English
KJV and WEB use "feeble", BSB and other modern versions "stragglers" or "those lagging behind". "Stragglers" gives their position in the column. "Feeble" gives their condition. The Hebrew carries both: they were at the back because they were worn out.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Septuagint has τοὺς κοπιῶντας, "those who were toiling/exhausted". Later rabbinic interpretation (Sifre, followed by Rashi) read it morally, as people "weakened by sin" who had dropped outside the protecting cloud. That is a later homiletic reading and not the plain sense.
Where it appears
Deuteronomy · 1
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Deuteronomy 25:18 הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים the stragglers
how they met you on your journey when you were tired and weary, and they attacked all your stragglers; they had no fear of God.
Here: "The worn-out ones", the people too exhausted to keep pace. In the Hebrew Bible this word occurs only here. In a migrating people they would have been the elderly, the sick, mothers with small children and the people tending slow livestock.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.