What Does Leviticus 11:23 Mean?
But all other winged swarming things, which have four feet, are a recoil to you.
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
But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.THE KEY
The “flying creeping things” are winged swarmers in Hebrew, so the verse names them by their teeming movement, not simply by their ability to fly.
THE MEANING
You see a defined limit around what may be eaten: the four-footed winged swarmers outside the kinds just allowed remain detestable to you. “All other” makes the line a remainder after an exception, so it does not exclude every flying creature.
THE ROOT
שֶׁרֶץ
sherets swarming creature
GROWS FROM
שרץ
To swarm or teem; a mass of living movement.
“winged swarming things” in this verse is sherets swarming creature. The Hebrew names these creatures as swarmers of the wing. English “creeping things” can make them sound defined by how they crawl, but the root points to their teeming movement, a category that also applies to creatures in the waters and, elsewhere, to people multiplying.
ALSO GROWS
sharats: To swarm, teem, or multiply abundantly.
שָׁרַץ
In Exodus 1:7, this verb describes Israel multiplying in Egypt; the same root can name human abundance as well as animal swarming.
sherets: A swarming or teeming creature.
שֶׁרֶץ
Genesis 1:20 uses this word family for creatures that teem in the waters, showing that the root describes a manner of living and moving, not a single species.
שֶׁקֶץ
sheqets detestable thing
GROWS FROM
שקץ
To regard as detestable or abhorrent.
“a recoil” in this verse is sheqets detestable thing. The word marks the creature as something to recoil from, not just as a member of a different category. Paired with “swarming,” it gives the line both its classification and its force: this kind of winged swarmer is to remain repellent to you.
ALSO GROWS
shaqats: To detest or regard as abhorrent.
שָׁקַץ
The verb behind the noun makes the response explicit: the creature is not merely sorted into a class; it is held as detestable.
shiqquts: A detestable thing or abomination.
שִׁקּוּץ
This related noun appears for objects regarded as abhorrent, showing how the root can name what is rejected as well as the act of detesting.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks living creatures by kind, and those distinctions determine whether they are received or kept apart.
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.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
Yet these you may eat, of every winged swarming thing that walks upon all four, having legs above its feet to leap upon the earth.Both verses use שרץ (sherets, “swarming creature”) for the flying creeping things. Verse 21 identifies a permitted subset by its leaping legs; “all other” in verse 23 closes the boundary around the rest.
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