What Does Deuteronomy 14:20 Mean?
But of all clean winged things you shall eat.
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 of all clean fowls ye may eat.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “clean” here shares its root with the “clean heart” in Psalm 51, joining what is received as food to a wider language of cleanness.
THE MEANING
This verse gives you permission to eat from a defined category: the clean birds. It makes a distinction part of what may be received. The Hebrew word for “clean” also describes a clean heart, carrying that wider sense of cleanness into the verse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that permission means everything is interchangeable: what may be eaten is still named within a boundary.
THE ROOT
טָהוֹר
ṭāhôr
GROWS FROM
טהר
ṭ-h-r
be clean or pure
The same Hebrew root describes the “clean heart” in Psalm 51:10, so this word belongs to a family used for cleanness in both food and the inner life. The verse’s dietary category carries that wider root-family with it.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāhôr: Clean or pure.
טָהוֹר
This is the form used for the birds in the verse.
ṭāhorāh: Cleanness or purification.
טָהֳרָה
This noun shows the same root extending from a clean thing to the state or process of cleanness.
THE PATTERN
Cleanness marks a meaningful boundary in what is eaten, what is within, and what God names clean.
To part between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed, do not make common.THE THREAD
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.“Clean” in both verses comes from טהר (ṭ-h-r), the Hebrew root for being clean or pure. Deuteronomy applies it to food; the Psalm applies it to the heart, showing one root spanning what is received and what is renewed.
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