Leviticus 11:23

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

But all winged creeping things which have four feet, are an abomination to you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Download a study sheet

One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.

This verse Autodidact and up

Study sheet (.html) Plain text (.txt)

A passage Seminary Student

Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.

Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.

Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

Word by word

More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →

Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →

שֶׁ֥קֶץ

sheqets

H8263

“abomination”

Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 11× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Leviticus 7:21

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H8262

TWOT: 2459a , 2459b

detestable thing or idol, an unclean thing, an abomination, detestation

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 →

10: words
8: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is שֶׁ֥קֶץ abomination H8263 — appearing just 11 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

שֶׁ֥קֶץ abomination H8263 occurs in 11 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 nouns
1 adjective
1 pronoun
2 prepositions
1 particle

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 14 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 10 Hebrew tokens and 12 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.

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 Leviticus 11:23 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְכֹל֙ שֶׁ֣רֶץ הָע֔וֹף אֲשֶׁר ל֖וֹ אַרְבַּ֣ע רַגְלָ֑יִם שֶׁ֥קֶץ ה֖וּא לָכֶֽם

But all winged creeping things which have four feet, are an abomination to you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Leviticus 11:23 Septuagint · lemma form

πᾶς ἑρπετόν ἀπό ὁ πετεινόν ὅς εἰμί τέσσαρες πούς βδέλυγμα εἰμί σύ

Every creeping thing from among the birds, which has four feet, is an abomination to you.

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 דִי לֵהּ אַרְבַּע רַגְלִין שִׁקְצָא הוּא לְכוֹן

(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 רִיחֲשָׁא דְעוֹפָא דְלֵיהּ אַרְבַּע רִיגְלִין שִׁיקְצָא הוּא לְכוֹן

But all flying reptiles which have four feet are to be an abomination to you;

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 Leviticus 11:23 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 →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Lev 11:23 But all [other] flying creeping things, which have four feet, [shall be] an abomination unto you.

Ver. 23. Which have four feet.] See on Lev 11:21.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joseph Benson's Commentary

Lev 11:23-25. All other — That is, which have not those legs above and beside their feet, mentioned Lev 11:21. For these ye shall be unclean — If they did either eat, or so much as touch the carcasses of them, they were not, for that day, to come into the tabernacle, to eat of any holy thing, or to converse freely with their neighbours. And as a sign of this legal uncleanness, (Lev 11:25,) they were to bathe in water, which was the usual rite of purification in such cases. Until the even — They were to keep apart by themselves all that day: for their day began in the evening. “The uncleanness continued only till the evening,” says Henry, “to signify that all ceremonial pollutions were to come to an end by the death of Christ in the evening of this world.” And we must learn by daily renewing our repentance every night for the failings of the day, and by a fresh application to the blood of sprinkling, to cleanse ourselves from the pollutions which we contract by them, that we may not lie down in our uncleanness.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(23) But all other flying creeping things.—Better, but all other winged creeping things. Besides the above-named four species and their kindreds, all other locusts, as well as insects of any kind, are to be abhorred as food.

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

John Gill's Exposition

But all other flying creeping things,.... Excepting the four sorts before mentioned, wherefore we rightly supply the word "other":

which have four feet; or more; the Vulgate Latin version adds, "only", but wrongly; for those that have more are unclean, and forbidden to be eaten, excepting those in the preceding verse; and most creeping things that fly have six feet, as the locusts themselves, reckoning their leaping legs into the number; though it may be observed, that those creatures that have six feet have but four equal ones, on which they walk or creep; and the two foremost, which are longer, are as hands to them to wipe their eyes with, and protect them from anything that may fall into them and hurt them; they not being able to see clearly because of the hardness of their eyes, as Aristotle (a) observes, and particularly it may be remarked of the fly, as it is by Lucian (b), that though it has six feet it only goes on four, using the other two foremost as hands; and therefore you may see it walking on four feet, with something eatable in its hands, lifting them up on high, just after the manner of men: now all such creatures that have four feet or more, excepting the above:

shall be an abomination unto you; abhorred as food, and abstained from.

(a) Ut supra. (Hist. Animal. l. 9. c. 6.) (b) De Musca.

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

Only. Equal in length, ver. 20-21. (Menochius)

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).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

i.e. All such except those now mentioned; the word other being here understood out of the former verse, without which there might seem to be a contradiction between this and that verse. But the words may be, and by the vulgar Latin are, thus rendered, But all flying creeping things which have only four feet; which word only is to be gathered out of Lev 11:20,21; i.e. which have not those legs above and besides their feet mentioned Lev 11:21. And so all the verses agree well together.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

All other - That is, which have not those legs above and besides their feet mentioned, ver. 21.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

'וכל שרץ העוף וגו‎ BUT ALL PROLIFIC CREATURES AMONG FOWL etc. — This repetition of the statement already made in verse 20 is intended to teach that if it has five feet it is clean (Sifra, Shemini, Chapter 5 10).

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.

Leviticus, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 10 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is sheqets (“abomination”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “abomination” (sheqets) contribute to the verse as a whole?
How does Leviticus 7:21, which shares the word «abomination», 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?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 17 words in this verse.
8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.