קְלֹקֵל

From the study of Numbers 21:5

Range of meaning

Occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. It comes from the root qll, which basically means 'to be light' and from that 'to be slight, insignificant, despised'. In one verb form the same root means 'to treat as light', and so 'to curse' (qillel). The doubled consonants are a Hebrew pattern that intensifies or belittles, giving something like 'utterly slight', 'wretched', 'contemptible'. HALOT and BDB both give 'worthless, contemptible'.

Against the English

KJV/YLT 'light bread' keeps the root sense of lightness. ESV 'worthless', NIV/NASB 'miserable', BSB 'wretched', WEB 'disgusting' and NLT 'horrible' all go for the tone of contempt. None of them can carry the root meaning and the scorn at once.

How it drifted

KJV's 'light bread' was literal for 1611 ('light' = slight, of little substance). In modern, especially Southern American, English 'light bread' means ordinary soft white loaf bread, so the insult disappears.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Septuagint renders it diakenos, 'empty, hollow' ('the empty bread'), and the Vulgate cibus levissimus, 'very light food'. The Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 75b) and Rashi read 'light' physically: the manna was absorbed completely into the body without waste, and the people grumbled that it would swell up inside them. This is a later rabbinic explanation, not the plain sense.