What Does Deuteronomy 14:10 Mean?
But whatever has no fins and scales, you shall not eat; it is unclean to you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.THE KEY
The boundary is carried on the creature itself: fins and scales mark what may cross from water into food.
THE MEANING
The verse draws the food boundary around a creature’s visible features: without fins and scales, it is unclean for you and is not eaten. The distinction is in the creature, and the verse names its consequence for the one receiving it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being a creature of the water alone does not make it fit for food; the verse marks fins and scales as the distinguishing boundary.
THE ROOT
טָמֵא
ṭāmēʾ
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
to be unclean or become impure
The Hebrew family keeps the state of uncleanness and the act of making unclean under one root. Here, “unto you” locates that status in relation to the eater, making it part of the stated food boundary.
ALSO GROWS
ṭumʾāh: uncleanness, impurity
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the condition with the same root that underlies the verse’s word “unclean.”
ṭimmēʾ: to defile, make unclean
טִמֵּא
This verbal branch names the act associated with that condition, keeping the root’s related meanings of state and consequence together.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes distinctions legible through a creature’s kind, features, or sorting, and those distinctions shape how each is received.
And God created the great sea serpents, and every living soul that creeps, which the waters swarmed with after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.These you may eat from all that is in the waters. Whatever has fins and scales in the seas and the rivers, these you may eat.Again, the governance of the heavens is like a net thrown into the sea, gathering from every kind. Which, when it was full, they drew up onto the shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the rotten away.THE THREAD
These you shall eat, of all that are in the waters. Whatever has fins and scales, you shall eat.Verse 9 names the presence of fins and scales as the mark for what may be eaten; verse 10 turns the same boundary around and names its excluded side. Together, they show the permitted and barred categories through the same paired signs.
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