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Deuteronomy 14:15

in Deuteronomy 14

the ostrich, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk,

BSB

The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾

ASV

and the ostrich, and the night-hawk, and the sea-mew, and the hawk after its kind,

KJV

And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,

This verse in Deuteronomy 14

Commentary

3 notes on this verse

This site's exposition

Of all the creatures that live in the water

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.

This site's exposition

the ostrich, the screech owl

Leviticus 11:16 names the ostrich, the screech owl, the gull and the hawk in the same order. Albert Barnes explains the small differences between the two lists of unclean birds by the time and circumstances of the speaker. Lamentations 4:3 calls a cruel people like an ostrich in the wilderness.

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

On the verses either side of this one

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

10 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.

  • וְאֵת֙and <obj.>

    veetH853 →10935 times

  • בַּ֣ת[the] daughter of

    batH1323 →588 times

  • הַֽיַּעֲנָ֔הthe ostrich

    haiyaanahH3284 →

  • וְאֶת־and <obj.>

    veetH853 →10935 times

  • הַתַּחְמָ֖סthe screech owl

    hatachmasH8464 →

  • וְאֶת־and <obj.>

    veetH853 →10935 times

  • הַשָּׁ֑חַףthe gull

    hashachafH7828 →

  • וְאֶת־and <obj.>

    veetH853 →10935 times

  • הַנֵּ֖ץthe falcon

    hanetzH5322 →

  • לְמִינֵֽהוּ׃to kind its

    leminehuH4327 →31 times

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

The walk

5 stops

Each card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.

  • Through

    Job 30:29

    I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.

    it leads to

    • Micah 1:8

      Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.

    • Psalms 102:6

      I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.

    • Job 17:14

      and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

    • Psalms 44:19

      But You have crushed us in the lair of jackals; You have covered us with deepest darkness.

    • Malachi 1:3

      but Esau I have hated, and I have made his mountains a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

Where this verse is studied

About Deuteronomy

Moses Viewing the Promised Land, Frederic Edwin Church, 1846. Public domain.
Moses Viewing the Promised Land, Frederic Edwin Church, 1846. Public domain.

This page draws on Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.