Leviticus 11:1-17

Clean and Unclean Land Creatures

11:1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, 11:2 “Tell the Israelites: ‘This is the kind of creature you may eat from among all the animals ¹  that are on the land. 11:3 You may eat any among the animals that has a divided hoof (the hooves are completely split in two ² ) and that also chews the cud. ³  11:4 However, you must not eat these ⁴  from among those that chew the cud and have divided hooves: The camel is unclean to you ⁵  because it chews the cud ⁶  even though its hoof is not divided. ⁷  11:5 The rock badger ⁸  is unclean to you because it chews the cud even though its hoof is not divided. 11:6 The hare is unclean to you because it chews the cud even though its hoof is not divided. 11:7 The pig is unclean to you because its hoof is divided (the hoof is completely split in two ⁹ ), even though it does not chew the cud. ¹⁰  11:8 You must not eat from their meat and you must not touch their carcasses; ¹¹  they are unclean to you.

Clean and Unclean Water Creatures

11:9 “‘These you can eat from all creatures that are in the water: Any creatures in the water that have both fins and scales, ¹²  whether in the seas or in the streams, ¹³  you may eat. 11:10 But any creatures that do not have both fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the streams, from all the swarming things of the water and from all the living creatures that are in the water, are detestable to you. 11:11 Since they are detestable to you, you must not eat their meat and their carcass you must detest. 11:12 Any creature in the water that does not have both fins and scales is detestable to you.

Clean and Unclean Birds

11:13 “‘These you are to detest from among the birds – they must not be eaten, because they are detestable: ¹⁴  the griffon vulture, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, 11:14 the kite, the buzzard of any kind, ¹⁵  11:15 every kind of crow, ¹⁶  11:16 the eagle owl, ¹⁷  the short-eared owl, the long-eared owl, the hawk of any kind, 11:17 the little owl, the cormorant, the screech owl,

Leviticus 20:25

20:25 Therefore you must distinguish ¹⁸  between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean, and you must not make yourselves detestable by means of an animal or bird or anything that creeps on the ground – creatures ¹⁹  I have distinguished for you as unclean. ²⁰ 

Deuteronomy 14:1-29

The Holy and the Profane

14:1 You are children ²¹  of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald ²²  for the sake of the dead. 14:2 For you are a people holy ²³  to the Lord your God. He ²⁴  has chosen you to be his people, prized ²⁵  above all others on the face of the earth. 14:3 You must not eat any forbidden ²⁶  thing. 14:4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 14:5 the ibex, ²⁷  the gazelle, ²⁸  the deer, ²⁹  the wild goat, the antelope, ³⁰  the wild oryx, ³¹  and the mountain sheep. ³²  14:6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. ³³  14:7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. ³⁴  (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you). 14:8 Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, ³⁵  it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. 14:9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 14:10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you. 14:11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 14:12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, ³⁶  the vulture, ³⁷  the black vulture, ³⁸  14:13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah ³⁹  after its species, 14:14 every raven after its species, 14:15 the ostrich, ⁴⁰  the owl, ⁴¹  the seagull, the falcon ⁴²  after its species, 14:16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl, ⁴³  14:17 the jackdaw, ⁴⁴  the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 14:18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, the bat, 14:19 and any winged thing on the ground are impure to you – they may not be eaten. ⁴⁵  14:20 You may eat any clean bird. 14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages ⁴⁶  and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. ⁴⁷ 

The Offering of Tribute

14:22 You must be certain to tithe ⁴⁸  all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year. 14:23 In the presence of the Lord your God you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, ⁴⁹  your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the place he chooses to locate his name, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. 14:24 When he ⁵⁰  blesses you, if the ⁵¹  place where he chooses to locate his name is distant, 14:25 you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, ⁵²  and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself. 14:26 Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it. 14:27 As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you. 14:28 At the end of every three years you must bring all the tithe of your produce, in that very year, and you must store it up in your villages. 14:29 Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.

Ezekiel 4:14

4:14 And I said, “Ah, sovereign Lord, I have never been ceremonially defiled before. I have never eaten a carcass or an animal torn by wild beasts; from my youth up, unclean meat ⁵³  has never entered my mouth.”

Ezekiel 44:31

44:31 The priests will not eat any bird or animal that has died a natural death or was torn to pieces by a wild animal. ⁵⁴ 

[11:2]  ¹ tn Heb “the animal,” but as a collective plural, and so throughout this chapter.

[11:3]  ² tn Heb “every divider of hoof and cleaver of the cleft of hooves”; KJV, ASV “parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted.”

[11:3]  ³ tn Heb “bringer up of the cud” (a few of the ancient versions include the conjunction “and,” but it does not appear in the MT). The following verses make it clear that both dividing the hoof and chewing the cud were required; one of these conditions would not be enough to make the animal suitable for eating without the other.

[11:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “this,” but as a collective plural (see the following context).

[11:4]  ⁵ sn Regarding “clean” versus “unclean,” see the note on Lev 10:10.

[11:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “because a chewer of the cud it is” (see also vv. 5 and 6).

[11:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “and hoof there is not dividing” (see also vv. 5 and 6).

[11:5]  ⁸ sn A small animal generally understood to be Hyrax syriacus; KJV, ASV, NIV “coney”; NKJV “rock hyrax.”

[11:7]  ⁹ tn See the note on Lev 11:3.

[11:7]  ¹⁰ tn The meaning and basic rendering of this clause is quite certain, but the verb for “chewing” the cud here is not the same as the preceding verses, where the expression is “to bring up the cud” (see the note on v. 3 above). It appears to be a cognate verb for the noun “cud” (גֵּרָה, gerah) and could mean either “to drag up” (i.e., from the Hebrew Qal of גָרָר [garar] meaning “to drag,” referring to the dragging the cud up and down between the stomach and mouth of the ruminant animal; so J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:647, 653) or “to chew” (i.e., from the Hebrew Niphal [or Qal B] of גָרָר used in a reciprocal sense; so J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 149, and compare BDB 176 s.v. גָרַר, “to chew,” with HALOT 204 s.v. גרר qal.B, “to ruminate”).

[11:8]  ¹¹ sn The regulations against touching the carcasses of dead unclean animals (contrast the restriction against eating their flesh) is treated in more detail in Lev 11:24-28 (cf. also vv. 29-40). For the time being, this chapter continues to develop the issue of what can and cannot be eaten.

[11:9]  ¹² tn Heb “all which have fin and scale” (see also vv. 10 and 12).

[11:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “in the water, in the seas and in the streams” (see also vv. 10 and 12).

[11:13]  ¹⁴ tn For zoological remarks on the following list of birds see J. Milgrom, Leviticus (AB), 1:662-64; and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC), 159-60.

[11:14]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and the buzzard to its kind” (see also vv. 16 and 19 for the same expression “of any kind”).

[11:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “every crow to its kind.” Many English versions (e.g., KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT) render this as “raven.”

[11:16]  ¹⁷ tn Literally, “the daughter of the wasteland.” Various proposals for the species of bird referred to here include “owl” (KJV), “horned owl” (NIV, NCV), and “ostrich” (ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[20:25]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “And you shall distinguish.” The verb is the same as “set apart” at the end of the previous verse. The fact that God had “set them apart” from the other peoples roundabout them called for them to “distinguish between” the clean and the unclean, etc.

[20:25]  ¹⁹ tn The word “creatures” has been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the following relative clause modifies the animal, bird, or creeping thing mentioned earlier, and not the ground itself.

[20:25]  ²⁰ tc The MT has “to defile,” but Smr, LXX, and Syriac have “to uncleanness.”

[14:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); TEV, NLT “people.”

[14:1]  ²² sn Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald. These were pagan practices associated with mourning the dead; they were not be imitated by God’s people (though they frequently were; cf. 1 Kgs 18:28; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 47:5; Hos 7:14 [LXX]; Mic 5:1). For other warnings against such practices see Lev 21:5; Jer 16:5.

[14:2]  ²³ tn Or “set apart.”

[14:2]  ²⁴ tn Heb “The Lord.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[14:2]  ²⁵ tn Or “treasured.” The Hebrew term סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah) describes Israel as God’s choice people, those whom he elected and who are most precious to him (cf. Exod 19:4-6; Deut 14:2; 26:18; 1 Chr 29:3; Ps 135:4; Eccl 2:8 Mal 3:17). See E. Carpenter, NIDOTTE 3:224.

[14:3]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “forbidden; abhorrent”) describes anything detestable to the Lord because of its innate evil or inconsistency with his own nature and character. See note on the word “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25. Cf. KJV “abominable”; NIV “detestable”; NRSV “abhorrent.”

[14:5]  ²⁷ tn The Hebrew term אַיָּל (’ayyal) may refer to a type of deer (cf. Arabic ’ayyal). Cf. NAB “the red deer.”

[14:5]  ²⁸ tn The Hebrew term צְבִי (tsÿvi) is sometimes rendered “roebuck” (so KJV).

[14:5]  ²⁹ tn The Hebrew term יַחְמוּר (yakhmur) may refer to a “fallow deer”; cf. Arabic yahmur (“deer”). Cf. NAB, NIV, NCV “roe deer”; NEB, NRSV, NLT “roebuck.”

[14:5]  ³⁰ tn The Hebrew term דִּישֹׁן (dishon) is a hapax legomenon. Its referent is uncertain but the animal is likely a variety of antelope (cf. NEB “white-rumped deer”; NIV, NRSV, NLT “ibex”).

[14:5]  ³¹ tn The Hebrew term תְּאוֹ (tÿ’o; a variant is תּוֹא, to’) could also refer to another species of antelope. Cf. NEB “long-horned antelope”; NIV, NRSV “antelope.”

[14:5]  ³² tn The Hebrew term זֶמֶר (zemer) is another hapax legomenon with the possible meaning “wild sheep.” Cf. KJV, ASV “chamois”; NEB “rock-goat”; NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “mountain sheep.”

[14:6]  ³³ tn The Hebrew text includes “among the animals.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[14:7]  ³⁴ tn The Hebrew term שָׁפָן (shafan) may refer to the “coney” (cf. KJV, NIV) or hyrax (“rock badger,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[14:8]  ³⁵ tc The MT lacks (probably by haplography) the phrase וְשֹׁסַע שֶׁסַע פַּרְסָה (vÿshosa’ shesa’ parsah, “and is clovenfooted,” i.e., “has parted hooves”), a phrase found in the otherwise exact parallel in Lev 11:7. The LXX and Smr attest the longer reading here. The meaning is, however, clear without it.

[14:12]  ³⁶ tn NEB “the griffon-vulture.”

[14:12]  ³⁷ tn The Hebrew term פֶּרֶס (peres) describes a large vulture otherwise known as the ossifrage (cf. KJV). This largest of the vultures takes its name from its habit of dropping skeletal remains from a great height so as to break the bones apart.

[14:12]  ³⁸ tn The Hebrew term עָזְנִיָּה (’ozniyyah) may describe the black vulture (so NIV) or it may refer to the osprey (so NAB, NRSV, NLT), an eagle-like bird subsisting mainly on fish.

[14:13]  ³⁹ tn The Hebrew term is דַּיָּה (dayyah). This, with the previous two terms (רָאָה [ra’ah] and אַיָּה [’ayyah]), is probably a kite of some species but otherwise impossible to specify.

[14:15]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “owl.” The Hebrew term בַּת הַיַּעֲנָה (bat hayya’anah) is sometimes taken as “ostrich” (so ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT), but may refer instead to some species of owl (cf. KJV “owl”; NEB “desert-owl”; NIV “horned owl”).

[14:15]  ⁴¹ tn The Hebrew term תַּחְמָס (takhmas) is either a type of owl (cf. NEB “short-eared owl”; NIV “screech owl”) or possibly the nighthawk (so NRSV, NLT).

[14:15]  ⁴² tn The Hebrew term נֵץ (nets) may refer to the falcon or perhaps the hawk (so NEB, NIV).

[14:16]  ⁴³ tn The Hebrew term תִּנְשֶׁמֶת (tinshemet) may refer to a species of owl (cf. ASV “horned owl”; NASB, NIV, NLT “white owl”) or perhaps even to the swan (so KJV); cf. NRSV “water hen.”

[14:17]  ⁴⁴ tn The Hebrew term קָאַת (qa’at) may also refer to a type of owl (NAB, NIV, NRSV “desert owl”) or perhaps the pelican (so KJV, NASB, NLT).

[14:19]  ⁴⁵ tc The MT reads the Niphal (passive) for expected Qal (“you [plural] must not eat”); cf. Smr, LXX. However, the harder reading should stand.

[14:21]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

[14:21]  ⁴⁷ sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the Lord and fittingly concludes the topic of various breaches of purity and holiness as represented by the ingestion of unclean animals (vv. 3-21). See C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid In Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35.

[14:22]  ⁴⁸ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, indicated in the translation by the words “be certain.”

[14:23]  ⁴⁹ tn This refers to wine in the early stages of fermentation. In its later stages it becomes wine (יַיִן, yayin) in its mature sense.

[14:24]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “He” in 14:2.

[14:24]  ⁵¹ tn The Hebrew text includes “way is so far from you that you are unable to carry it because the.” These words have not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons, because they are redundant.

[14:25]  ⁵² tn Heb “bind the silver in your hand.”

[4:14]  ⁵³ tn The Hebrew term refers to sacrificial meat not eaten by the appropriate time (Lev 7:18; 19:7).

[44:31]  ⁵⁴ tn The words “by a wild animal” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation as a clarification of the circumstances.