Hebrew word · H5231

נֵ֫כֶל

benikhleihem

trick

The verb nakhal means to plot, scheme, deal craftily or deceive. The noun nekhel, "craftiness, scheme," appears only in this verse.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

cunning, wiliness, craft, knavery

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 Numbers 25:18

Range of meaning

The verb nakhal means to plot, scheme, deal craftily or deceive. It occurs only four times: Gen 37:18 (Joseph's brothers "conspired against him to kill him"), here, Ps 105:25 (Egypt "dealt craftily with his servants"), and Mal 1:14 ("cursed be the cheat" who vows a fine animal and offers a blemished one). The noun nekhel, "craftiness, scheme," appears only in this verse.

Against the English

KJV "wiles... beguiled," WEB "wiles... deceived," YLT "frauds... acted fraudulently," BSB "deceitfully... seduced." The Hebrew uses the noun and verb of the same root together ("plots they plotted"). YLT alone keeps that echo. BSB's "seduced" adds a sexual meaning the verb does not have. The sexual element comes from the story in 25:1–8, not from this word.

How it drifted

BSB's "seduced" is an interpretive choice. In modern English it almost always means sexual seduction. The Hebrew root is about cunning and treachery in general.

Used elsewhere in the period

In every other use the root describes premeditated deceit by a hostile party: brothers plotting murder, Egypt's oppression, a dishonest worshipper. The Greek translation (LXX) renders it with words from the dolos family ("cunning, treachery"). Josephus (Antiquities 4.126–130) and Philo (Life of Moses 1.294–299) tell the episode as a deliberate stratagem.

Where it appears

Numbers · 1

  1. Numbers 25:18 בְּנִכְלֵיהֶ֛ם by deceitfulness<es> their

    For they assailed you deceitfully when they seduced you in the matter of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of the Midianite leader, the woman who was killed on the day the plague came because of Peor.”

    Here: "With their schemes." The plural suggests more than one ruse. This noun appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. It means calculated cunning, not spontaneous wrongdoing.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.