Deuteronomy 14:12

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

But these are they of which you shall not eat: the eagle, and the gier-eagle, and the ospray,

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וְהַפֶּ֖רֶס

pereç

H6538

“and · the · bird of prey”

Conjunction + Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 2× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Leviticus 11:13

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H6536

TWOT: 1821a

bird of prey - perhaps bearded vulture or ossifrage - perhaps an extinct animal, exact meaning unknown

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

8: words
7: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is וְהַפֶּ֖רֶס bird of prey H6538 — appearing just 2 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וְהַפֶּ֖רֶס bird of prey H6538 occurs in 2 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Leviticus 11:13

Grammatical profile

1 verb
3 nouns
1 pronoun
1 preposition
2 particles

Verb forms

תֹאכְל֖וּ Qal · Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 18 words from the Hebrew and 16 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 8 Hebrew tokens and 14 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Deuteronomy 14:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Leviticus 11:13–19 "'These you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the vulture, and the black vulture,

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Deuteronomy 14:12 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְזֶ֕ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא תֹאכְל֖וּ מֵהֶ֑ם הַנֶּ֥שֶׁר וְהַפֶּ֖רֶס וְהָֽעָזְנִיָּֽה

But these are they of which you shall not eat: the eagle, and the gier-eagle, and the ospray,

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Deuteronomy 14:12 Septuagint · lemma form

καί οὗτος οὐ ἐσθίω ἀπό αὐτός ὁ ἀετός καί ὁ γρύψ καί ὁ ἁλιάετος

And these of them you⌃ shall not eat; the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the sea-eagle,

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

On this verse, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְדֵין דִי לָא תֵיכְלוּן מִנְהוֹן נִשְׁרָא וְעָר וְעַזְיָא

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְדֵין דְּלָא תֵיכְלוּן מִנְהוֹן נִישְׁרָא וְעוּזָא וּבַר גּוֹזָא

But these are they which you may not eat: the eagle, the ossifrage, the osprey,

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Deuteronomy 14:12 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) These are they of which ye shall not eat.—With one exception, the unclean birds are the same described in Lev_11:13-19.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

12. eagle] nesher, Ar. nisr, the great vulture or griffon, gyps fulvus, identified by the baldness of its head and neck, Mic_1:16; from its frequency and its size ‘the most striking ornithological feature of Palestine’ (Tr. 95 f.); worshipped among Syrians and Arabs.

gier eagle] peres, the breaker, A.V. the ossifrage, the Lämmergeier or bearded vulture. It carries its prey to a great height and then drops it, repeating the operation till the prey is shattered (Tr. 94), LXX, γρύψ.

ospray] ‘oznîyyah; LXX, ἁλιάετος (the sea-eagle or osprey). Tristram (98) takes it either as generic for all the eagles, or specific either for the golden eagle, ‘not uncommon in winter over the whole country’ but in summer only on Lebanon and Hermon, or (107) the osprey, which would be likely from its fish-eating habits to have a special name. Read eagle. In Arabia the small swart-brown eagle of the desert is called ‘agab (spelt ‘aḳab), ‘flying in the air they resemble sea-mews’ (Doughty, i. 328, ii. 218).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself,.... This law is repeated from Lev 17:15; see Gill on Lev 17:15,

thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; not to the proselyte of righteousness, for he might not eat of it any more than an Israelite, and if he did, he was obliged to wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and was unclean until the evening, as in Lev 17:15 but to a proselyte of the gate, who took upon him, as Jarchi observes, not to serve idols, one that has renounced idolatry, but has not embraced the Jewish religion; such an one might eat of things that died of themselves, or were not killed in a proper manner. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan call him an uncircumcised stranger or proselyte, who had not submitted to circumcision, as the proselyte of righteousness did:

or thou mayest sell it unto an alien; an idolater, one that was neither a proselyte of righteousness nor of the gate, an entire alien from the commonwealth of Israel; one that was occasionally in the land of Canaan, or was travelling in it or through it, to such an one it might be sold:

for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God; separated from all others, and devoted to his service, and therefore must live on clean, food and good meat, and not eat what others might:

thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk; this is the third time this law is mentioned; refer to the notes; see Gill on Exo 23:19; see Gill on Exo 34:26; the reason of which repetition, the Jewish writers say (s), is, that it is once said to forbid the eating it, a second time to forbid any use of it or profit by it, and a third time to forbid the boiling of it.

(s) Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Kiddushin, c. 2. sect. 9.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

12. These… ye shall not eat — The birds prohibited here are as in Lev_11:13-23, except that the glede is added.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

וזה אשר לא תאכלו מהם BUT THESE ARE THEY WHICH YOU MAY NOT EAT — This again is intended to forbid as food the bird that is slaughtered in the case of a leper (Sifrei Devarim 103:1-2; Kiddushin 57a).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Deuteronomy, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is pereç (“bird of prey”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word pereç carries the sense “bird of prey.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Leviticus 11:13, which shares the word «bird of prey», read alongside this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«תֹאכְל֖וּ» is a Qal Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 11 words in this verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.