Q: The word for “curse” in Hebrew from Genesis 27:12 is “קללה” (kelalah). Jacob feared the negative consequence he would bring upon himself if he deceived his father, Isaac and also in Deut 11:26 related to the curse on Mount Ebal. In Genesis 3:14 and Jeremiah 17:5 “אָרוּר” is used instead of kelalah. However in Genesis 12:3 both words are used “and him who curses you (וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ֖) I will curse (אָאֹ֑ר)”. Both words in Hebrew have the same structure as you mentioned but when read arur in context it seems to describe a deep, consequential state of being cut off compared to when kelalah is used. What is the essence of these 2 Hebrew words and its effect upon mankind?

A: Hello dear friend,

The word Kelalah in Hebrew as a “curse” is used as diminution. For example: the root קל״ל always carries a sense of lightness, thinning, reduction, it comes from the unit root letters קל which means light. In daily living when the weather report says: אל תקלו ראש בהתראות לגשמים וסופות it says: “consider the alerts of rain and storms and don’t take it lightly like it is not there.”

A kelalah is not divine anger but a movement of lowering, a loss of blessing, a weakening of vitality. In the Hebrew sense, something that was full becomes less full, less present, less alive.

It is a diminishing that moves outward, like wind draining out of a sail.

So when Jacob fears, “I will bring upon myself a kelalah,” he’s speaking about the possibility of losing the blessing’s fullness, slipping downward in his inner stature.

While the verb Arur signifying a state of being cut off

The root אר״ר has a different essence: it carries the quality of binding, constricting, closing off. If kelalah is reduction, arur is severance, a blocking of the channel that connects a being to its source.

This is why “Arur is the man who trusts in man” (Jer. 17:5) is not merely a curse but a description of a condition. It describes a human being who closes himself within the finite, tying his life to what cannot sustain him, and in doing so becomes distanced from the infinite.

This makes the verse in Genesis 12 so poignant: “Whoever makes you small (mekalelecha), I will cut off (a’or).” As if the Divine is saying: Anyone who acts from the energy of diminishment creates, within themselves, the state of severance.

And what does this mean for humankind? Neither word speaks of divine punishment. Both describe inner modes of being: When someone curses on the traffic jam, there is diminishing, or vitality drains. Where there is constriction, separation deepens.

And all of this is healed only by returning to the One, to the place where nothing can be diminished, and nothing can be cut off, because there was never truly a second to begin with

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