What Does Leviticus 11:22 Mean?
Even these of them you may eat, the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
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
Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.THE KEY
The verse turns a swarm into named kinds: permission is precise enough to distinguish what can be received.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with permission that has edges: certain creatures may be received, and each is named by kind. Abundance does not flatten distinction; what may be received is discerned within it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that this whole class is simply forbidden falls away: the verse names particular kinds that are permitted.
THE ROOT
אַרְבֶּה
ʾarbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
רָבָה (ravah): to increase, become many.
The word for locust is commonly connected to the root רבה, “increase, become many.” The verse names particular kinds within that abundance, showing that a swarm is not treated as one indistinguishable mass.
ALSO GROWS
ravah: Increase, become many.
רָבָה
This verb shares the root associated with the locust’s name and makes its abundance audible.
hirbah: Increase or multiply.
הִרְבָּה
This causative form carries the same root’s sense of making numerous, linking the locust to multiplication.
THE PATTERN
Life is named by kind: what may be received or how it belongs is made legible through distinctions.
And God said, "Let the earth bring out living soul after its kind, cattle, creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind." And it was so.These are the beasts you shall eat. The ox, the sheep, and the goat.But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."The Hebrew word אַרְבֶּה (ʾarbeh, locust) is commonly connected to רבה (ravah, increase or multiply), the root behind “multiply” here. That shared root carries the sense of abundant life into Leviticus, where particular kinds within that abundance are named as permitted.
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