Leviticus 11:2

Summary

Moses and Aaron are commanded to speak to the Israelites and announce a rule for identifying which land creatures may be eaten. The verse functions as an introductory formula that sets up the dietary classification that follows in the rest of the chapter.

Key words

• da.be.Ru ("speak", H1696G) — piel imperative plural; the piel stem gives the verb an intensive/directive force, and the plural addresses both Moses and Aaron as the ones commanded to relay the message.
• le.Mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed le-; this is the standard formula introducing direct, quoted speech that follows.
• zot ("this", H2063) — feminine singular demonstrative pointing forward to the category about to be defined, agreeing grammatically with chaiYah.
• ha.chai.Yah ("the living creature", H2416C) — feminine singular noun with definite article; used here as a generic singular denoting a class of creature, not one specific animal.
• to.khe.Lu ("you will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect plural; the imperfect aspect expresses an ongoing or permitted future action, functioning here as a permission ("you may eat") rather than a simple prediction.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parts: a command to speak (da.be.Ru... le.mor) and the content of that speech, introduced by the demonstrative zot. The construction zot ha.chaiYah 'asher tokhelu ("this is the living creature which you will eat") is a classification formula: the singular noun chaiYah with the definite article functions generically, naming a category of animal life rather than one individual creature, while the relative clause 'asher tokhelu restricts that category to what is permitted for eating.

The second half of the verse, mikkol habbehemah 'asher 'al ha'aretz ("from every animal that is on the earth", H3605, H0929, H0776G), sets the broader field from which the permitted category is drawn. The construct form kol habbehemah ("every [of] the animal") indicates that the coming rules will select a subset from the full range of land animals, introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("which/that", H0834A) locating them "on the earth."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew uses a singular collective noun, chaiYah ("the living creature"), with the singular demonstrative zot. The LXX renders this with a plural, ταῦτα τὰ κτήνη ("these are the animals"), and the Vulgate similarly uses the plural haec sunt animalia ("these are the animals"). Both Greek and Latin versions shift the Hebrew's generic singular into an explicit plural category, though the underlying legal sense — identifying permitted animals — is preserved in all three.