What Does Deuteronomy 14:12 Mean?
But from among the birds, these you shall not eat, the eagle, the ossifrage, and the osprey.
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
But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,THE KEY
The Hebrew name behind “ossifrage” shares its root with the word for a hoof that is “parted,” making division the hidden thread in this food boundary.
THE MEANING
This verse names the eagle, ossifrage, and osprey as birds you do not eat. The boundary is concrete: each is named as food that remains outside your table.
THE ROOT
פֶּרֶס
peres
GROWS FROM
פרס
To split, divide, or break apart.
The Hebrew name פֶּרֶס (peres, “ossifrage”) is linked to the root פרס (p-r-s, “split or divide”), echoing the English name “ossifrage,” or bone-breaker. The same root marks a hoof as parted in Leviticus 11:3 and bread as dealt out in Isaiah 58:7: division can describe both a creature’s form and food portioned for another.
ALSO GROWS
paros: To divide or deal out.
פָּרֹס
In Isaiah 58:7, this verb describes dealing bread to the hungry, showing the root’s sense of portioning.
mafriset: Parting or dividing.
מַפְרֶסֶת
In Leviticus 11:3, it describes the hoof that is parted, using the same root within the text’s food distinctions.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes boundaries around eating concrete by naming what is withheld.
But from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.And these are the ones you recoil from among the winged things, and do not eat them, for they are a recoil. The eagle, and the ossifrage, and the osprey,But Peter said, By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.THE THREAD
Whatever splits the hoof and is cleft through, and brings up the cud among the beasts, that you may eat.The Hebrew word מַפְרֶסֶת (mafriset, “parting”) behind “parteth” shares the root פרס (p-r-s, “split or divide”) with פֶּרֶס (peres, “ossifrage”). The food distinctions use this root for both the excluded bird and the split hoof that marks an animal as edible.
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