What Does Deuteronomy 14:13 Mean?
And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after its kind.
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 the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,THE KEY
This line names particular birds and their kinds, rather than treating “birds” as one undifferentiated whole.
THE MEANING
The line names the glede, kite, and vulture while preserving a distinction among their kinds. The list stays concrete: these are named forms, not a blur of “birds.”
THE ROOT
לְמִינָהּ
ləmināh
GROWS FROM
מין
Kind, species, or sort: a class of living things.
“after his kind” in this verse is ləmināh. The noun מִין (min) also appears in the creation account’s repeated “after its kind,” the same vocabulary for keeping living forms distinct. Here it makes the list specific to the named bird and its kind, rather than making “bird” one undifferentiated category.
ALSO GROWS
ləmināh: According to its kind; the feminine form used in this verse.
לְמִינָהּ
The phrase attaches the distinction to the named bird, keeping the category precise.
ləminēhû: According to its kind; a masculine form used in Genesis 1:25.
לְמִינֵהוּ
The same noun recurs in the creation account, linking this list to the Bible’s language for distinct living forms.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names living forms according to their distinct kinds instead of flattening them into one undifferentiated class.
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing upon the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.And the vulture, and the kite after his kind,Not all flesh is the same flesh; but there is one flesh of humans, another flesh of the herd, another flesh of the winged, and another of fish.THE THREAD
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing upon the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.Genesis 1:25 uses the same noun מִין (min) in לְמִינֵהוּ (ləminēhû), “according to its kind.” Deuteronomy’s לְמִינָהּ (ləmināh) places its bird list in that same language of distinct living forms.
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