Leviticus 11:30

Summary

Leviticus 11:30 continues a list of small land creatures classified as unclean among the swarming things (from v. 29-30). This verse names five specific reptile types, each introduced with the conjunction ve ("and") and the definite article ha ("the"), giving the list a formulaic, cumulative rhythm.

Key words

• 'anaqah ("gecko", H0604) — feminine singular noun, first item in the series, marked with article and conjunction.
• koach ("monitor lizard", H3581A) — masculine singular noun; same syntactic pattern as the others in the chain.
• letaah ("wall lizard", H3911) — feminine singular noun, third in sequence.
• chomet ("skink", H2546) — masculine singular noun, fourth item.
• tinshemet ("chameleon", H8580) — feminine singular noun, closing the list; this same consonantal form appears elsewhere in Leviticus 11 (v. 18) applied to a bird, showing that identical lexemes can denote different creatures depending on context.

What the text says

The verse consists entirely of five nouns joined by repeated ve...ha ("and the") constructions, with no verb of its own — it depends grammatically on the preceding verses (11:29) that introduce the category "these are unclean for you among the swarming things that swarm on the earth" (sheretz, per v. 29 context). Each noun alternates in grammatical gender (feminine, masculine, feminine, masculine, feminine), though this alternation carries no semantic weight beyond normal Hebrew noun morphology. The repetition of the article before every single item, rather than only before the first, is a stylistic feature of Hebrew list-making that treats each creature as a distinct, individually specified category rather than a general group.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew terms in this verse are difficult to match precisely to modern zoological categories, and this is reflected in significant divergence across the ancient and modern versions provided. The LXX renders the list as mygalē (shrew), chamēleōn (chameleon), kalabōtēs (gecko-type lizard), saura (lizard), and aspalax (mole-rat) — none of which align in sequence with the Hebrew order of gecko/monitor lizard/wall lizard/skink/chameleon. The Vulgate follows a similar but not identical set: mygale, chamaeleon, stellio, lacerta, talpa (shrew, chameleon, lizard, lizard, mole). The Spanish RV1909 diverges further still, using erizo ("hedgehog"), lagarto ("lizard"), caracol ("snail"), babosa ("slug"), and topo ("mole") — terms drawn from an entirely different semantic domain than reptiles. The modern BSB and SBLIBRE renderings align closely with the glosses supplied for the Hebrew text itself (gecko, monitor lizard, common lizard, skink, chameleon), differing from the ancient versions primarily in this identification of the fifth term as "chameleon" rather than as a burrowing mammal like "mole" or "shrew."