Deuteronomy 14:19

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

All winged creeping things are unclean to you: they shall not be eaten.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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Word by word

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שֶׁ֣רֶץ

sherets

H8318

“swarmers of”

Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct

Appears 15× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 1:20

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H8317

TWOT: 2467a

teeming or swarming things, creepers, swarmers - of insects, animals, small reptiles, quadrupeds

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 שֶׁ֣רֶץ swarmers H8318 — appearing just 15 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

שֶׁ֣רֶץ swarmers H8318 occurs in 15 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

1 verb
3 nouns
1 adjective
1 pronoun
1 preposition
1 particle

Verb forms

יֵאָכֵֽלוּ Niphal · Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 13 words from the Hebrew and 15 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 13 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 14:19 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Leviticus 11:20–23 "'All flying insects that walk on all fours are an abomination to you.
Philippians 3:19 whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things.

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 14:19 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְכֹל֙ שֶׁ֣רֶץ הָע֔וֹף טָמֵ֥א ה֖וּא לָכֶ֑ם לֹ֖א יֵאָכֵֽלוּ

All winged creeping things are unclean to you: they shall not be eaten.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Deuteronomy 14:19 Septuagint · lemma form

πᾶς ὁ ἑρπετόν ὁ πετεινόν ἀκάθαρτος οὗτος εἰμί σύ οὐ ἐσθίω ἀπό αὐτός

All winged animals that creep are unclean to you; you⌃ shall not eat of them.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

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)

וְכֹל רִחֲשָׁא דְעוֹפָא מְסָאָב הוּא לְכוֹן לָא יִתְאָכְלוּן

(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)

וְכָל דִּיבְבֵי וְזִיבוֹרֵי וְזִיזֵי דִטְלוֹפְחֵי וּפוּלֵי דְפַרְשֵׁיהּ מִן אוֹכְלָא וּפַרְחִין הֵי כְעוֹפָא מְסָאֲבִין אִינוּן לְכוֹן לָא יִתְאַכְלוּן

and all flies (bees) and wasps, and all worms of vegetables and pulse, which come away from (materials of) food and fly as birds, are unclean to you, they may not be eaten;

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 14:19 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 →

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

14:19-20 winged insects: Cp. Lev 11:20-23.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

19. all winged creeping things are unclean] Lit. swarming things that fly, all winged insects. To this Lev_11:21 f. adds that go upon all fours and excepts from the rule such as have jointed legs above their feet to leap on the earth, i.e. various kinds of leaping locusts, as distinguished from the running locust (see Shipley and Cook, art. ‘Locust’ in E.B.). They come under the clean insects of the next v.

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

Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed,.... This was a different tithe from that which was made and given to the Levites, and out of which a tithe was taken and given to the priests, and which they only ate of; but this, as appears by the following verse, was what the owners themselves ate of, and so the tithing was left to be made by them themselves, and which they were to be sure to make, and to make it truly and faithfully:

that the field bringeth forth year by year; being ploughed and sowed yearly, the produce of it was to be tithed yearly; the Jewish writers (t) observe on this, that it must be what the earth produces, and is fit for food: and it must be thy seed, which is especially thine, and is not common, but has an owner, and this excludes mushrooms, &c. which thou sowest not, and therefore cannot be called thy seed.

(t) Ib. in Misn. Maaserot, c. 1. sect. 1.

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

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Wings. Hebrew, "every reptile that flieth," such as bees. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

שרץ העוף — These are the lowly creatures which move upon the ground: flies, hornets and the unclean species of grass-hoppers (cf. Rashi on Leviticus 11:20), come under the term of שרץ.

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 sherets (“swarmers”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “swarmers” (sherets) shape what this verse is saying?
Genesis 1:20 shares the word «swarmers» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
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?
The verb «יֵאָכֵֽלוּ» is Niphal Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Tyndale Open Study Notes and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 10 words in this verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.