What Does Leviticus 11:13 Mean?
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,
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 these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,THE KEY
The Hebrew uses one root for both the command to detest these birds and the name “detestable thing,” binding the boundary to the response it calls forth.
THE MEANING
These birds belong among the flying creatures, yet the verse marks them as outside what is eaten. Its repeated word-family gives that limit the force of rejection, not mere classification. Their exclusion from the table does not erase their place in the living world.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the assumption that everything alive is automatically available for consumption.
THE ROOT
תְּשַׁקְּצוּ
teshaqqetsu
GROWS FROM
ש־ק־ץ
sh-q-ts
To detest or regard as detestable.
“recoil from” in this verse is teshaqqetsu. The command to reject and the label for what is rejected share the same consonantal seed. English gives them similar wording, while Hebrew makes their shared root explicit: the boundary is both an act of detesting and a name for the thing excluded.
ALSO GROWS
shaqats: To detest or regard as detestable.
שָׁקַץ
This is the verb behind the command “have in abomination,” expressing the response attached to the boundary.
sheqets: A detestable thing; a thing marked for rejection.
שֶׁקֶץ
This noun names the birds themselves as excluded from food.
shiqquts: A detestable thing or abomination, often used of an idol.
שִׁקּוּץ
It shows the same root naming what is held as abhorrent beyond this list of birds.
הָעוֹף
hāʿōph
GROWS FROM
ע־ו־ף
ʿ-w-p
To fly; a flying creature.
“winged things” in this verse is hāʿōph. The Hebrew word for “fowls” belongs to the same root as the verb “to fly.” It places these birds within the broader world of flying life, then draws a separate boundary around which of them may be eaten.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōph: A flying creature or bird.
עוֹף
This is the noun used for the birds in the verse.
ʿûph: To fly.
עוּף
The verbal branch makes the category’s connection to flight visible beneath the English word “fowls.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks food as a named subset of life, distinguishing what is received from the abundance of what exists.
And God said, "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant upon the face of all the earth, and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it. It shall be yours for food."You shall therefore separate between clean animals and unclean, and between unclean winged things and clean. You shall not make your living souls recoil by animal, or by winged thing, or by any crawling thing upon the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed, do not make common.THE THREAD
All winged things that creep, walking upon all four, are a recoil to you.This verse uses שֶׁקֶץ (sheqets, “a detestable thing”), from ש־ק־ץ (sh-q-ts, “to detest”), the same root family that names the birds in Leviticus 11:13. Its recurrence shows that the root’s force of rejection marks a category, not only this particular list.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us