Deuteronomy 14:17

Summary

This verse continues a list of ritually unclean birds within Deuteronomy 14, naming three species in sequence: the ka'at ("desert owl", H6893), the rachamah ("Egyptian vulture", H7360), and the shalakh ("cormorant", H7994). The verse is a simple coordinated list, syntactically bound to the enumeration begun in the preceding verses.

Key words

• ka'at ("desert owl", H6893) — feminine singular noun, marked definite by the article ha (H9009); first item in the list.
• rachamah ("Egyptian vulture", H7360) — feminine singular noun, also definite; the data marks a final he (H9011) glossed as "directional/toward," attached to this word's ending.
• shalakh ("cormorant", H7994) — masculine singular noun, definite, closing the list.
• 'et (H0853) — the direct object marker, appearing before rachamah and shalakh, marking them as definite direct objects governed by an implicit verb from earlier in the passage (e.g., "you shall not eat").
• ve (H9002) — the conjunction "and," repeated before each item, producing a paratactic (simply joined) list structure typical of Biblical Hebrew enumerations.

What the text says

The verse consists of three noun phrases joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002), each noun carrying the definite article ha (H9009). The first item, ka'at ("desert owl", H6893), lacks the object marker 'et, while the second and third items, rachamah ("Egyptian vulture", H7360) and shalakh ("cormorant", H7994), are each introduced by 'et (H0853), the marker signaling a definite direct object. This distribution suggests the verse depends grammatically on a verb outside this segment — likely the prohibition verb governing the whole list in the surrounding context — with ka'at functioning as the first object of that verb and the 'et-marked nouns continuing the same object series.

A notable feature in the data is the final he (H9011) attached to rachamah, glossed here as a "directional he" ("toward"). In ordinary usage this suffix marks motion toward a place on verbs or place-names; its presence on a common noun within a list of animals is grammatically unusual and the provided data does not explain its function beyond identifying the morpheme.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew names three birds. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) also gives three: mergulum ("diving bird"), porphyrionem ("purple bird"), and nycticoracem ("night raven"), corresponding positionally to ka'at, rachamah, and shalakh, though the specific species implied differ from the Hebrew glosses. The Spanish RV1909 renders them as "somormujo" (grebe), "calamón" (purple gallinule), and "corvejón" (shag/cormorant), while SBLIBRE gives "pelícano" (pelican), "buitre" (vulture), and "cormorán" (cormorant) — showing that translators have identified these birds with different species across traditions. The LXXSWETE text supplied here contains a repeated, garbled sequence (καὶ καὶ τὰ αὐτῷ, αὐτῷ) whose textual state does not allow a clear one-to-one match with the Hebrew list beyond the first term, πελεκᾶνα ("pelican"), corresponding to ka'at.