Deuteronomy 14:11

Summary

The verse issues a general permission or instruction: every bird classified as tehorah ("clean", H2889) may be eaten. It uses the distributive construction kol + singular noun, a common Hebrew way of expressing "every one of a category" rather than "all of them collectively."

Key words

• kol ("every", H3605) — construct form of "all/every," linking to the following noun to create a distributive sense: "every single bird" rather than "all birds as a group."
• tzippor ("bird", H6833) — singular common-gender noun, functioning as the object category being classified; grammatically singular despite referring to an entire class of creatures.
• tehorah ("clean", H2889) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with tzippor, marking the category as permitted based on a purity classification not further defined in this verse alone.
• tokhelu ("you will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural. The imperfect aspect can carry future, habitual, or permissive/modal nuances depending on context.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence places the object phrase kol-tzippor tehorah ("every clean bird") before the verb tokhelu ("you will eat"), a common word order in legal or instructional Hebrew prose that foregrounds the category being addressed before stating the action permitted toward it. The singular noun tzippor combined with the construct kol is a standard Hebrew distributive idiom: it does not mean "all birds together" but rather "any bird, one by one, that falls into the clean category."

The verb tokhelu is second-person masculine plural, addressing a collective audience (the group referred to throughout the surrounding text), and its imperfect form allows for either a future statement ("you will eat") or a permissive/modal reading ("you may eat"), a flexibility inherent in the qal imperfect and not fully captured by any single rendering.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Πᾶν ὄρνεον καθαρὸν φάγεσθε) mirrors the Hebrew structure closely, using a singular ὄρνεον ("bird") with πᾶν ("every") and a future-tense verb φάγεσθε, paralleling the imperfect tokhelu.

The Vulgate (Omnes aves mundas comedite) shifts to a plural noun aves ("birds") instead of the Hebrew singular tzippor, and renders the verb as an imperative comedite ("eat!") rather than reflecting the imperfect's future/modal quality found in the Hebrew and LXX.

Among modern renderings, BSB ("You may eat any clean bird") and SBLIBRE ("podrán comer," "will be able to eat") both make explicit a permissive/modal sense latent in the Hebrew imperfect, while RV1909 ("comeréis," simple future) stays closer to a literal future rendering, similar to the LXX's φάγεσθε.