TO BE LIGHT, slight, of no weight — and from that, TO MAKE LIGHT OF, to treat as nothing, to CURSE; and its noun qelalah, a curse. The fourth of the Hebrew curse-words this dictionary keeps apart, beside arar, qabab and alah. ⭐ Genesis 12:3 (already on these pages) shows the difference in one clause: the one who belittles you — meqallelekha, this verb — I will curse, a'or, which is arar. A man makes light; God curses. ⭐ Deuteronomy 23:5–6 retells the Balaam story with this root and no other: Balaam was hired leqallelekha, to curse you, and God turned ha-qelalah, the curse, into a blessing — while Numbers 22–24, the story itself, uses arar and qabab throughout and this root not once. Deuteronomy chose the word because it is the book's own: qelalah is the covenant curse set before Israel beside the blessing at 11:26, and pronounced from Mount Ebal in chapter 27 (not yet on these pages). ⚠ It is also the verb of Genesis 8:21, never again will I curse the ground, and of the law against cursing a parent (Exodus 21:17) or God (Leviticus 24). Wherever English prints 'curse', the reader cannot tell which of the four words is under it; this dictionary can. ⚠ The noun qelalah is the CURSE set on Mount Ebal at Deuteronomy 11:29, and at 27:13 six tribes are stationed there al ha-qelalah, for the curse — a phrase in one verse of the Hebrew Bible, with no verb of cursing and no one named to speak it, where the six on Gerizim stand to bless the people. What the Levites then say is not this word but arur, twelve times. → first discussed at Deut 23:5