The Hebrew chagab refers to a type of locust or grasshopper. It appears among the clean insects permitted for eating in Levitical law and famously in the spies' report from Canaan.
In Numbers 13:33, the ten faithless spies describe themselves as chagabim (grasshoppers) in the sight of the giants — a crisis of identity and faith that led to forty years of wilderness wandering. God uses this image in reverse in Isaiah 40:22, where the nations are like grasshoppers before the Creator. The same creature that represents human smallness and fear also underscores divine majesty. Chagab also appears in Ecclesiastes 12:5 as an image of the frailty of old age. The locust, though humble, is clean and edible — John the Baptist ate locusts (Matthew 3:4), connecting the wilderness prophet to Israel's wilderness heritage.