What Does Leviticus 11:30 Mean?
And the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.
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 ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.THE KEY
The KJV names a ferret, but the Hebrew anaqah may preserve a sound-name from the root of groaning, turning a species label into an echo.
THE MEANING
This verse places five small creatures within the passage’s boundary for what is unclean to eat. Several Hebrew creature names do not map securely to the species named in English, so the boundary is clearer than some of the identifications.
THE ROOT
אֲנָקָה
ʾanaqah
GROWS FROM
אנק
To groan or moan; the animal name’s connection to this root is plausible but uncertain.
The KJV’s “ferret” translates anaqah, a creature name whose exact identification is uncertain. Its form may echo the Hebrew word for groaning, so a label for a small creature may carry the sound of a human cry as well.
ALSO GROWS
naʾaqah: Groaning
נַאֲקָה
This form names the sound associated with the root and makes the possible sound-based creature name visible.
naʾaqatam: Their groaning
נַאֲקָתָם
Exodus 2:24 uses this form for the people’s groaning, extending the same root from a creature name to a human cry.
THE PATTERN
Creature names mark boundaries around what may be eaten and what is treated as unclean.
These also are unclean to you among the swarming things that creep upon the earth. The weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind,Nevertheless, these you shall not eat from among those that bring up the cud or split the hoof, such as the camel, the hare, and the coney, for they bring up the cud but do not split the hoof. Therefore they are unclean to you.But Peter said, By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.THE THREAD
And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.The Hebrew anaqah, rendered “ferret,” is often associated with אנק, the root used for “their groaning” here. That possible sound-link is uncertain as animal etymology, but it reveals an echo the English species label hides.
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