What Does Leviticus 11:18 Mean?
And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,
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 swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,THE KEY
The bird called הָרָחָם (hā-rāḥām, the raḥam bird) shares the consonants ר־ח־ם (r-ḥ-m) with Hebrew words for compassion, even as the verse marks it as forbidden food.
THE MEANING
This line names three birds excluded from food. One name, הָרָחָם (hā-rāḥām, the raḥam bird), echoes the Hebrew root for compassion, though the bird-name’s derivation is uncertain; the verse leaves that resonance beside the boundary without explaining it.
THE ROOT
הָרָחָם
hā-rāḥām
GROWS FROM
רחם
r-ḥ-m
The root רחם (r-ḥ-m) means to show compassion. The related noun רֶחֶם (reḥem) means womb.
The KJV’s “gier eagle” translates הָרָחָם (hā-rāḥām, the raḥam bird), whose consonants match the root רחם (r-ḥ-m), associated with compassion and the womb. The bird-name’s exact derivation is uncertain, so this is a striking Hebrew resonance rather than a certain explanation of the name.
ALSO GROWS
raḥamim: Compassion, mercies
רַחֲמִים
This noun carries the root into the language of compassion, making the sound-link audible without proving the bird-name derives from it.
reḥem: Womb
רֶחֶם
This related noun shows the root’s range reaching into embodied life as well as compassionate care.
raḥum: Compassionate
רַחוּם
This adjective appears in Exodus 34:6 and provides a clear scriptural example of the compassion sense carried by the same root.
THE PATTERN
Clean and unclean boundaries become visible through named creatures and explicit limits, while their force rests in God’s distinction.
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.Of all clean birds you shall eat.And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed, do not make common.THE THREAD
And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,The Hebrew adjective רַחוּם (raḥum, compassionate) comes from the same consonantal root רחם (r-ḥ-m) that appears in the bird-name הָרָחָם (hā-rāḥām, the raḥam bird). That shared root lets the compassion resonance surface, while the bird-name’s uncertain derivation leaves the connection suggestive rather than certain.
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