Leviticus 11:18

Summary

This verse continues a list of birds forbidden as food, naming three additional species: the tinshemet ("barn owl", H8580), the qa'at ("desert owl", H6893), and the racham ("Egyptian vulture", H7360). Each noun is marked as a definite direct object introduced by the particle 'et (H0853) and joined to the next by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).

Key words

• tinshemet ("barn owl", H8580) — feminine singular noun, first item in this triad, definite by article ha (H9009).
• qa'at ("desert owl", H6893) — feminine singular noun, second item, structurally parallel to the first.
• racham ("Egyptian vulture", H7360) — masculine singular noun, closing the list; note the shift to masculine gender compared to the two preceding feminine nouns.
• 'et (H0853) — untranslated object marker, repeated before each noun to signal that each bird is a direct object of the governing verb from the wider passage (not present in this verse itself).
• ve (H9002) — coordinating conjunction, repeated three times to link the items as a simple additive list rather than a hierarchy.

What the text says

The verse consists of three parallel noun phrases, each built identically: conjunction + object marker + definite article + noun. This repeated syntactic pattern (ve-'et-ha-X) creates a rhythmic, list-like structure typical of Levitical purity catalogs, where each animal is named individually rather than grouped by category. The definite article on each noun indicates that these are specific, identifiable species within the source language's zoological classification, though the exact referents of tin.She.met, qa.'At, and ra.Cham are debated among translators, as shown by the wide variation in the rendered animal names across versions.

The grammatical uniformity across the three items — same conjunction, same object marker, same article — signals that the text treats them as a single set of three additional forbidden birds, continuing a list begun earlier in the chapter. The gender shift from feminine (tinshemet, qa'at) to masculine (racham) reflects the grammatical gender inherent to each noun in Hebrew, not a change in classification logic.

Differences between versions

The identification of these three birds diverges sharply between traditions. The LXX renders the sequence as porphyrion ("purple heron/coot"), pelekan ("pelican"), and kyknos ("swan"), while the Vulgate follows a similar but reordered set: cygnus ("swan"), onocrotalus ("pelican"), porphyrio ("purple coot"). The RV1909, following this same tradition, gives "calamón, cisne, onocrótalo." The BSB and SBLIBRE instead reflect a modern ornithological interpretation of the Hebrew — "white owl, desert owl, osprey" and "lechuza blanca, pelícano, buitre" respectively — showing that translators disagree considerably on which real-world species correspond to tinshemet, qa'at, and racham.