Deuteronomy 14:21

Summary

This verse prohibits eating an animal found already dead (nevelah, H5038), but allows giving or selling it to a non-Israelite, grounding the rule in Israel's status as a holy people belonging to Yehovah. It closes with an unrelated dietary prohibition: not cooking a young goat in its mother's milk.

Key words

• to.khe.Lu ("you will eat", H0398) — 2nd person masculine plural imperfect, giving the prohibition its ongoing/future force ("you shall not eat").
• Nevelah ("carcass", H5038) — feminine singular noun marked by the construct khol ("any of"), specifying the forbidden object as any animal that died naturally.
• Ger ("sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun with prefixed preposition-article la ("to the"), identifying the recipient of the carcass.
• ma.Khor ("you will sell it", H4376) — infinitive absolute, a grammatical form that intensifies or emphasizes the verbal action ("sell, indeed sell").
• qa.do.Vosh ("holy", H6918) — adjective modifying 'am ("people"), stating the reason clause introduced by ki ("for/because").

What the text says

The sentence opens with the negated imperfect lo tokhlu governing the object kol-nevelah, establishing a general prohibition against eating any carcass. The next clause reorders normal syntax by placing la-ger ("to the sojourner") before the verb titenennah ("you will give it"), a fronting that foregrounds the recipient rather than the action itself. This is followed by va'akhalah, a sequential perfect ("and he will eat it") continuing the narrative logic begun by the imperfect. The alternative option — selling to a foreigner (nokhri, H5237) — uses the infinitive absolute makhor, a form that intensifies the verbal idea rather than marking tense, suggesting emphatic permission rather than obligation.

The causal clause ki 'am qadosh attah la-Yehovah eloheikha ("for you are a holy people to Yehovah your God") supplies the rationale for the preceding distinction between what Israelites may eat and what they may pass to outsiders. The final clause, lo tevashel gedi bachalev immo, uses the piel imperfect tevashel ("you will boil/cook"), an intensive stem, and stands as a separate prohibition, joined to the carcass law only by proximity, not by grammatical or thematic connection within the verse itself.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders titenennah ("you will give it") as an imperative, "da ut comedat" ("give, that he may eat"), sharpening the Hebrew imperfect into a direct command. The LXX text supplied for this reference corresponds instead to tithe legislation (mention of dekaten and genēmatos, "tithe" and "produce"), not to the carcass/kid-in-milk material found in the Hebrew, so no direct lexical comparison with the Greek is possible from the data given.