What Does Leviticus 11:17 Mean?
And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,
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 little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,THE KEY
The cormorant’s Hebrew name is linked to a root meaning “cast,” folding an action into this list of birds.
THE MEANING
As you read, three birds stand distinctly before you: the little owl, the cormorant, and the great owl. The middle name carries an echo of casting, while the verse leaves that echo unexplained.
THE ROOT
שָׁלָךְ
shālāk
GROWS FROM
שׁלך
sh-l-kh
to cast, throw, or hurl
The Hebrew name for the cormorant is commonly linked to שׁלך (sh-l-kh, to cast or throw). Some lexicons suggest the name evokes the bird’s plunge into water, though both the species identification and the naming explanation are uncertain.
ALSO GROWS
vatashlekh: and she cast
וַתַּשְׁלֵךְ
In Genesis 21:15 this form describes Hagar casting the child under a shrub; it shows the forceful, outward movement carried by the root.
hashlekh: cast
הַשְׁלֵךְ
In Psalm 55:22 it appears in “Cast thy burden upon the LORD”; the same root can describe throwing a weight from one’s hold.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes distinctions in the living world through specific names and categories.
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,And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant.In it were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and the winged ones of the air.THE THREAD
And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant.Deuteronomy repeats the Hebrew name שָׁלָךְ (shālāk, cormorant), carrying the casting echo into a parallel list. The repetition shows that the name belongs to the shared scriptural naming of this bird, while its proposed link to the verb remains uncertain.
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