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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Leviticus 11:13 - 11:13
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(cf. Deu 14:11-18). Of birds, twenty varieties are prohibited, including the bat, but without any common mark being given; though they consist almost exclusively of birds which live upon flesh or carrion, and are most of them natives of Western Asia.
(Note: The list is “hardly intended to be exhaustive, but simply mentions those which were eaten by others, and in relation to which, therefore, it was necessary that the Israelites should receive a special prohibition against eating them” (Knobel). Hence in Deuteronomy Moses added the ראה and enumerated twenty-one varieties; and on doubt, under other circumstances, he could have made the list still longer. In Deu 14:11 צִפֹּור is used, as synonymous with עֹוף in Deu 14:20.)
The list commences with the eagle, as the king of the birds. Nesher embraces all the species of eagles proper. The idea that the eagle will not touch carrion is erroneous. According to the testimony of Arabian writers (Damiri in Bochart, ii. p. 577), and several naturalists who have travelled (e.g., Forskal. l.c. p. 12, and Seetzen, 1, p. 379), they will eat carrion if it is still fresh and not decomposed; so that the eating of carrion could very properly be attributed to them in such passages as Job 39:30; Pro 30:17, and Mat 24:28. But the bald-headedness mentioned in Mic 1:16 applies, not to the true eagle, but to the carrion-kite, which is reckoned, however, among the different species of eagles, as well as the bearded or golden vulture. The next in the list is peres, from paras = parash to break, ossifragus, i.e., wither the bearded or golden vulture, gypaetos barbatus, or more probably, as Schultz supposes, the sea-eagle, which may have been the species intended in the γρύψ = γρυπαίετος of the lxx and gryphus of the Vulgate, and to which the ancients seem sometimes to have applied the name ossifraga (Lucret. v. 1079). By the next, עָזְנִיָּה, we are very probably to understand the bearded or golden vulture. For this word is no doubt connected with the Arabic word for beard, and therefore points to the golden vulture, which has a tuft of hair or feathers on the lower beak, and which might very well be associated with the eagles so far as the size is concerned, having wings that measure 10 feet from tip to tip. As it really belongs to the family of cultures, it forms a very fitting link of transition to the other species of vulture and falcon (Lev 11:14). דָּאָה (Deut. דַּיָּה, according to a change which is by no means rare when the aleph stands between two vowels: cf. דֹּואֵג in 1Sa 21:8; 1Sa 22:9, and דֹּויֵג in 1Sa 22:18, 1Sa 22:22), from דָּאָה to fly, is either the kite, or the glede, which is very common in Palestine (v. Schubert, Reise iii. p. 120), and lives on carrion. It is a gregarious bird (cf. Isa 34:15), which other birds of prey are not, and is used by many different tribes as food (Oedmann, iii. p. 120). The conjecture that the black glede-kite is meant, - a bird which is particularly common in the East, - and that the name is derived from דָּאָה to be dark, is overthrown by the use of the word לְמִינָהּ in Deuteronomy, which shows that דאה is intended to denote the whole genus. אַיָּה, which is referred to in Job 28:7 as sharp-sighted, is either the falcon, several species of which are natives of Syria and Arabia, and which is noted for its keen sight and the rapidity of its flight, or according to the Vulgate, Schultz, etc., vultur, the true vulture (the lxx have Ἰκτίν, the kite, here, and γρύψ, the griffin, in Deut. and Job), of which there are three species in Palestine (Lynch, p. 229). In Deu 14:13 הָרָאָה is also mentioned, from רָאָה to see. Judging from the name, it was a keen-sighted bird, either a falcon or another species of vulture (Vulg. ixion).