Hebrew word · H3686
כְּסִיל
ukhesil
Chesil
As a common noun, kesil means 'fool, stupid person' (frequent in Proverbs) and also the constellation Orion (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8). Here it is a place name and appears only in this verse.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
§ Chesil = "foolish"
a town in the extreme south of Judah and 15 miles southwest of Beersheba; maybe same as be.tul (בְּתוּל "Bethul" H1329)
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 Joshua 15:30
- Range of meaning
As a common noun, kesil means 'fool, stupid person' (frequent in Proverbs) and also the constellation Orion (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8). Here it is a place name and appears only in this verse.
- Against the English
KJV and ESV-type versions spell it 'Chesil'. NIV and NLT spell it 'Kesil'. The difference is only spelling, but readers may not realise that both refer to the same Hebrew word.
- Used elsewhere in the period
In the parallel Simeonite lists, the place after Eltolad is Bethul (Joshua 19:4) or Bethuel (1 Chronicles 4:30). The Greek translation of Joshua 15:30 (the Septuagint) has a Beth- name, Baithēl. The 'Bethel' of the Negev in 1 Samuel 30:27 is often thought to be the same town.
Where it appears
Joshua · 1
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Joshua 15:30 וּכְסִ֖יל and Kesil
Eltolad, Chesil, Hormah,
Here: A Negev town that appears only here. The matching slot in the Simeon lists has Bethul/Bethuel, so many scholars take it as the same place under a variant or corrupted name. The ordinary word kesil means 'fool' or 'Orion', but nothing shows that either sense lies behind the town name.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.