What Does Deuteronomy 14:15 Mean?
And the owl, and the nighthawk, and the cuckoo, and the hawk 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 owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,THE KEY
The Hebrew’s closing phrase marks the hawk as its own kind, preserving its distinctness within the list.
THE MEANING
You meet a list of birds whose identities remain distinct, and the closing phrase marks the hawk according to its kind. The verse lets a shared boundary gather the list without erasing the particular creature within it.
THE ROOT
לְמִינֵהוּ
leminēhu
GROWS FROM
מין
Kind, type, or species.
“after his kind” in this verse is leminēhu. Here min names a kind, and the phrase attaches that kind to the hawk itself. The same phrase appears in the creation account for winged birds, linking this list to a wider pattern of creatures remaining distinct within their kinds.
ALSO GROWS
leminēhu: According to its kind.
לְמִינֵהוּ
This form appears here and in Genesis 1:21, marking the hawk and winged birds by their own kind.
lemināh: According to its kind.
לְמִינָהּ
Genesis 1:25 uses this form for the beast and cattle, carrying the same distinction across different creatures.
THE PATTERN
Living creatures are grouped without being collapsed into sameness.
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.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.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 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.Both verses use the Hebrew phrase leminēhu, “according to its kind.” Deuteronomy applies it to the hawk within its list; Genesis uses it for winged birds within the ordering of creation.
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