Leviticus 11:47

Summary

The verse states the purpose of the preceding dietary regulations: to make a distinction (hav.Dil, H0914) between the unclean and the pure, and between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not. It closes the chapter's classification system with a general statement of its function.

Key words

• hav.Dil ("separate", H0914) — Hiphil infinitive construct, causative form indicating the act of causing separation/distinction, governed by the preposition le ("to/for", H9005), giving the sense "in order to distinguish."
• ta.Me' ("unclean [thing]", H2931) — masculine singular adjective used substantively ("the unclean [thing]"), paired antithetically with ta.Hor.
• ta.Hor ("pure [thing]", H2889) — masculine singular adjective, substantival use, forming the first pair of opposites with ta.Me'.
• ne.'e.Khe.let ("is eaten", H0398) — Niphal (passive) participle, feminine singular, modifying chai.Yah ("living creature", H2416C) — describes the creature as one habitually/passively "being eaten."
• te.'a.Khel ("it will be eaten", H0398) — Niphal (passive) imperfect, feminine singular, describing ongoing or potential future non-consumption in the negated clause lo' te.'a.Khel ("shall not be eaten").

What the text says

The verse is built on four parallel prepositional phrases, each introduced by bein ("between", H0996G) in construct form, meaning literally "between X and between Y." The first pair opposes ta.Me' and ta.Hor, two adjectives used as nouns denoting general categories (unclean vs. pure), without specifying whether this refers to animals, persons, or objects. The second pair narrows the scope to chai.Yah ("living creature", H2416C), a feminine noun, distinguished by two different verbal forms of the same root 'akhal ("to eat", H0398): the participle ne.'e.Khe.let describes the creature in a stative/customary sense as "the one being eaten," while the imperfect te.'a.Khel, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), expresses a durative or modal sense "it will not be eaten" — a difference in aspect (participial vs. finite verbal) that marks the eaten category as a fixed classification and the non-eaten category as a standing prohibition rather than a mere description.

The entire sentence depends grammatically on the infinitive hav.Dil, which functions as a purpose clause summarizing the preceding chapter: the various instructions exist "in order to distinguish" between these paired categories. The four bein...u-bein clauses are stacked in series, syntactically parallel but semantically moving from the general (clean/unclean) to the specific (edible/inedible creatures).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chai.Yah ha-ne'ekhelet ("the living creature that is eaten") with the participle ζωογονούντων ("those bearing/producing life"), a different semantic emphasis than the Hebrew's passive "being eaten," and shows a textual repetition (ἀνὰ ἀνὰ, ἐσθιόκαὶ) reflecting scribal duplication in the Swete text. The Vulgate abstracts the four-part bein structure into two general categories, "mundi et immundi" and "quid comedere et quid respuere," omitting the explicit repetition of chai.Yah ("living creature") present in the Hebrew and reformulating the infinitive hav.Dil as "ut... noveritis" ("so that you may know"), shifting the emphasis from an act of distinguishing to an act of knowing.