Leviticus 11:46

Summary

Leviticus 11:46 closes the section on animal classifications with a summary formula, declaring that what precedes is the torah ("legal procedure/instruction", H8451) covering livestock, birds, water creatures, and creatures that swarm on the earth. The verse functions as a colophon, marking the end of a unit of legal material.

Key words

• torah ("[the] legal [procedure] of", H8451) — feminine singular construct noun; here it does not mean "law" in a general sense but names this specific block of instruction as a unified torah, grammatically bound to the list that follows.
• behemah ("livestock", H0929) — feminine singular noun with definite article; the first category named under the torah, referring to land animals.
• chayyah ("living", H2416A) — feminine singular adjective modifying nefesh ("creature", H5315K); the phrase nefesh ha-chayyah ("the living creature") is a construct combination denoting an animate being, distinct from the plain use of nefesh alone.
• romeset ("moves", H7430) — qal participle feminine singular from the root meaning "to move/creep"; used substantively as "the one that moves," describing creatures in the water.
• shoretzet ("swarms", H8317) — qal participle feminine singular; parallel in form to romeset, but applied to creatures on the earth (aretz, H0776H) rather than in the waters (mayim, H4325G).

What the text says

The verse opens with the demonstrative zot ("this", H2063) pointing back to the preceding material, followed immediately by torat in construct state, which grammatically requires a following noun to complete its meaning ("the torah of X"). The construct chain lists four categories joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002): behemah, ha-'of ("the bird[s]", H5775), kol nefesh ha-chayyah ha-romeset ba-mayim ("every living creature that moves in the waters"), and kol nefesh ha-shoretzet 'al ha-aretz ("every creature that swarms on the earth").

The two participles romeset and shoretzet are both feminine singular qal forms functioning as substantival modifiers ("the one that moves," "the one that swarms"), each governed by a prepositional phrase specifying location — ba-mayim ("in the waters") versus 'al ha-aretz ("on the earth"). This grammatical parallelism (participle + preposition + locale) creates a structured taxonomy: the verse distinguishes categories not by species name but by domain of movement, using the same syntactic template twice with different verbs and locations.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders torat as nomos ("law"), a broader term than the Hebrew construct "instruction/procedure of," and separates the categories with peri ("concerning") rather than reproducing the Hebrew's construct-chain structure. The Vulgate's lex animantium ac volucrum ("law of living things and birds") similarly uses lex, and translates romeset and shoretzet differently: movetur ("is moved") for the water creature and reptat ("crawls") for the land creature, whereas the Hebrew uses two participles built on distinct roots (ramas, H7430, and sharats, H8317) that are not translated as synonyms in Hebrew but are both rendered with motion-verbs in Latin.