What Does Deuteronomy 14:18 Mean in the King James?
And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The stork’s Hebrew name is commonly linked to חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love), so the list’s boundary does not flatten the creature into a mere category.
THE MEANING
This verse names the stork, the heron after her kind, the lapwing, and the bat among creatures outside the food boundary. Its language keeps the group specific: even the heron is named “after her kind,” rather than left as an undifferentiated bird. The boundary is drawn through recognition of particular forms.
THE ROOT
חֲסִידָה
chasidah
GROWS FROM
חסד
ḥ-s-d
Faithful love, kindness, or loyal care.
The stork’s Hebrew name is commonly connected with חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love), though the etymology is not certain. That sound-family places a word associated with faithful love inside a list marking a food boundary: the classification does not exhaust the creature’s name or nature.
ALSO GROWS
chesed: Faithful love; loyal care.
חֶסֶד
This is the root word commonly heard in the stork’s name, opening a connection between the bird and faithful love.
chasid: A faithful or devout person.
חָסִיד
This related form carries the sense of one marked by loyalty, showing how the root can name a quality as well as evoke it in the stork’s name.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names living forms while preserving distinctions within the larger category.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.THE THREAD
O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.The stork’s name is commonly linked to חֲסִידָה (chasidah, stork), from the same consonant family as חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love), rendered “mercy” here. That shared root lets the bird’s name echo the verse’s language of enduring faithful love.
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