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Deuteronomy 14:16

in Deuteronomy 14

the little owl, the great owl, the white owl,

BSB

The same verse in ASV and KJV

ASV

the little owl, and the great owl, and the horned owl,

KJV

The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan,

This verse in Deuteronomy 14

Commentary

2 notes on this verse

This site's exposition

These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters

on Deuteronomy 14:9-20

Water creatures get a test and no list, fins and scales, so the rule reaches species nobody has named. The birds are handled the other way, by naming what is forbidden and leaving all the rest clean, and this list runs to twenty one where Leviticus 11:13-19 gives twenty, the glede being the addition. The bat closes the list of fowls, since the grouping follows how a creature moves rather than how it is built. Leviticus 11:21-22 allowed four kinds of leaping insect, the locust among them, and verse 19 forbids every creeping thing that flieth without repeating that exception, which the Targum of Jonathan and Aben Ezra supply from the earlier text.

The record, by era

The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice

A commentator

Matthew Henry

1662–1714

Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)

proposed

Of all clean fowls you may eat. [4.] They are further forbidden, First, To eat the flesh of any creature that died of itself, because the blood was not separated from it, and, besides the ceremonial uncleanness which it lay under (from Lev. xi. 39 ), it is not wholesome food, nor ordinarily used among us, except by the poor.

How the passage was read

What the Jewish commentators add

התנשמת — This is the chauve-souris in old French; (English = bat).
Rashi: France, 1040–1105 · Rashi on Deuteronomy 14:16:1, via Sefaria, Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934

This section is reception history: how the passage was read and kept in the Jewish tradition. Where a reading parts from an essential of the Christian faith, the section says so at that point.

Texts and citation data: Sefaria; each excerpt follows its version’s licence. 7 further sources are cited on this chapter that carry no English text this site may quote or only restate the verse.

The words behind it

5 Hebrew words

Every Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.

  • אֶת־<obj.>

    ʾet-H85310935 times

  • הַכּ֥וֹסthe little owl

    hakosH3563

  • וְאֶת־and <obj.>

    veetH85310935 times

  • הַיַּנְשׁ֖וּףthe great owl

    haiyanshufH3244

  • וְהַתִּנְשָֽׁמֶת׃and the barn owl

    vehatinshametH8580

A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.

About Deuteronomy

Moses Comes Down from Mount Sinai, Gustave Doré, 1866. Public domain.
Moses Comes Down from Mount Sinai, Gustave Doré, 1866. Public domain.

This page draws on Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.