Deuteronomy 12:15

Summary

Deuteronomy 12:15 permits the Israelite to slaughter and eat meat according to personal desire, within their own settlements, as a blessing from Yehovah. It specifies that both ritually unclean and clean persons may eat this meat, comparing it to the eating of gazelle or deer — animals outside the sacrificial system.

Key words

• rak ("only", H7535) — restrictive adverb marking a contrast with what precedes it (likely the sacrificial restrictions of the prior verses), introducing a permitted exception.
• 'a.Vat ("desire of", H0185) — feminine singular construct beginning the chain 'avvat nafshekha ("the desire of your soul"), an idiom expressing personal appetite or craving as the basis for the permission.
• tiz.Bach ("you will slaughter", H2076) — qal imperfect, expressing an action not yet completed or habitually repeated; paired with the following verb through the narrative vav.
• 'a.khal.Ta ("you will eat", H0398) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the verbal chain begun by tizbach; together the two verbs form a single logical action: slaughter-then-eat.
• ha.Tame' ("the unclean", H2931) and ha.tahor ("the clean", H2889) — masculine singular adjectives with the definite article, functioning as substantives ("the unclean one," "the clean one"), referring to a person's ritual status rather than to the animal itself.

What the text says

The verse opens with rak ("only"), signaling a narrowing or exception to what has been stated earlier in the chapter. The phrase be-khol 'avvat nafshekha ("in all the desire of your self") uses a construct chain — 'avvat ("desire of") governing nafshekha ("your self/soul") — to express unrestricted personal appetite as the standard for this permission. The two main verbs, tizbach (imperfect) and ve-'akhalta (sequential perfect), form a linked pair: the imperfect sets up the action, and the vav-consecutive perfect carries it forward, producing the sense "you shall slaughter and [then] eat" as one continuous permitted act.

The location is marked by be-khol she'arekha ("in all your gates"), a construct chain using she'arim ("gates", H8179H) to indicate settlements or towns. The clause ha-tame' ve-ha-tahor yokhelennu ("the unclean and the clean shall eat it") uses the article with the adjectives tame' and tahor to denote persons of differing ritual status, both permitted to eat this meat — unlike sacrificial meat elsewhere restricted to the ritually clean. The comparison ka-tzvi ve-kha-'ayal ("like the gazelle and like the deer") points to non-sacrificial wild game as the reference category for this kind of eating.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be-khol she'arekha ("in all your gates") as ἐν πάσῃ πόλει ("in every city"), shifting the image from gates to cities. The Vulgate expands ha-tame' ("the unclean") with the added gloss "hoc est, maculatum et debile" ("that is, stained and weak") and ha-tahor ("the clean") with "hoc est, integrum et sine macula" ("that is, whole and without blemish"), interpretive additions not present in the Hebrew text. The LXX also adds ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ("together" or "likewise"), a phrase without a direct counterpart in the Hebrew construction.