Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Leviticus 11:29 - 11:29

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Leviticus 11:29 - 11:29


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To these there are attached analogous instructions concerning defilement through contact with the smaller creeping animals (Sherez), which formed the fourth class of the animal kingdom; though the prohibition against eating these animals is not introduced till Lev 11:41, Lev 11:42, as none of these were usually eaten. Sherez, the swarm, refers to animals which swarm together in great numbers (see at Gen 1:21), and is synonymous with remes (cf. Gen 7:14 and Gen 7:21), “the creeping;” it denotes the smaller land animals which move without feet, or with feet that are hardly perceptible (see at Gen 1:24). Eight of the creeping animals are named, as defiling not only the men with whom they might come in contact, but any domestic utensils and food upon which they might fall; they were generally found in houses, therefore, or in the abodes of men. חֹלֶד is not the mole (according to Saad. Ar. Abys., etc.), although the Arabs still call this chuld, but the weasel (lxx, Onk., etc.), which is common in Syria and Palestine, and is frequently mentioned by the Talmudists in the feminine form חוּלְדָה, as an animal which caught birds (Mishn. Cholin iii. 4), which would run over the wave-loaves with a sherez in its mouth (Mishn. Tohor. iv. 2), and which could drink water out of a vessel (Mishn. Para ix. 3). עַכְבָּר is the mouse (according to the ancient versions and the Talmud), and in 1Sa 6:5 the field-mouse, the scourge of the fields, not the jerboa, as Knobel supposes; for this animal lives in holes in the ground, is very shy, and does not frequent houses as is assumed to be the case with the animals mentioned here. צָב is a kind of lizard, but whether the thav or dsabb, a harmless yellow lizard of 18 inches in length, which is described by Seetzen, iii. pp. 436ff., also by Hasselquist under the name of lacerta Aegyptia, or the waral, as Knobel supposes, a large land lizard reaching as much as four feet in length, which is also met with in Palestine (Robinson, ii. 160) and is called el worran by Seetzen, cannot be determined.

Lev 11:30

The early translators tell us nothing certain as to the three following names, and it is still undecided how they should be rendered. אֲנָקָה is translated μυγάλη by the lxx, i.e., shrew-mouse; but the oriental versions render it by various names for a lizard. Bochart supposes it to be a species of lizard with a sharp groaning voice, because אָנַק signifies to breathe deeply, or groan. Rosenmüller refers it to the lacerta Gecko, which is common in Egypt, and utters a peculiar cry resembling the croaking of frogs, especially in the night. Leyrer imagines it to denote the whole family of monitores; and Knobel, the large and powerful river lizard, the water-waral of the Arabs, called lacerta Nilotica in Hasselquist, pp. 361ff., though he has failed to observe, that Moses could hardly have supposed it possible that an animal four feet long, resembling a crocodile, could drop down dead into either pots or dishes. כֹּוחַ is not the chameleon (lxx), for this is called tinshemeth, but the chardaun (Arab.), a lizard which is found in old walls in Natolia, Syria, and Palestine, lacerta stellio, or lacerta coslordilos (Hasselquist, pp. 351-2). Knobel supposes it to be the frog, because coach seems to point to the crying or croaking of frogs, to which the Arabs apply the termkuk, the Greeks κοάξ, the Romans coaxare. But this is very improbable, and the frog would be quite out of place in the midst of simple lizards. לְטָאָה, according to the ancient versions, is also a lizard. Leyrer supposes it to be the nocturnal, salamander-like family of beckons; Knobel, on the contrary, imagines it to be the tortoise, which creeps upon the earth (terrae adhaeret), because the Arabic verb signifies terrae adhaesit. This is very improbable, however. חֹמֶט (lxx), σαῦρα, Vulg. lacerta, probably the true lizard, or, as Leyrer conjectures, the anguis (Luth. Blindschleiche, blind-worm), or zygnis, which forms the link between lizards and snakes. The rendering “snail” (Sam. Rashi, etc.) is not so probable, as this is called שַׁבְלוּל in Psa 58:9; although the purple snail and all the marine species are eaten in Egypt and Palestine. Lastly, תִּנְשֶׁמֶת, the self-inflating animal (see at Lev 11:18), is no doubt the chameleon, which frequently inflates its belly, for example, when enraged, and remains in this state for several hours, when it gradually empties itself and becomes quite thin again. Its flesh was either cooked, or dried and reduced to powder, and used as a specific for corpulence, or a cure for fevers, or as a general medicine for sick children (Plin. h. n. 28, 29). The flesh of many of the lizards is also eaten by the Arabs (Leyrer, pp. 603, 604).

Lev 11:31

The words, “these are unclean to you among all swarming creatures,” are neither to be understood as meaning, that the eight species mentioned were the only swarming animals that were unclean and not allowed to be eaten, nor that they possessed and communicated a larger amount of uncleanness; but when taken in connection with the instructions which follow, they can only mean, that such animals would even defile domestic utensils, clothes, etc., if they fell down dead upon them. Not that they were more unclean than others, since all the unclean animals would defile not only persons, but even the clothes of those who carried their dead bodies (Lev 11:25, Lev 11:28); but there was more fear in their case than in that of others, of their falling dead upon objects in common use, and therefore domestic utensils, clothes, and so forth, could be much more easily defiled by them than by the larger quadrupeds, by water animals, or by birds. “When they be dead,” lit., “in their dying;” i.e., not only if they were already dead, but if they died at the time when they fell upon any object.

Lev 11:32

In either case, anything upon which one of these animals fell became unclean, “whether a vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin.” Every vessel (כְּלִי in the widest sense, as in Exo 22:6), “wherein any work is done,” i.e., that was an article of common use, was to be unclean till the evening, and then placed in water, that it might become clean again.

Lev 11:33

Every earthen vessel, into which (lit., into the midst of which) one of them fell, became unclean, together with the whole of its contents, and was to be broken, i.e., destroyed, because the uncleanness as absorbed by the vessel, and could not be entirely removed by washing (see at Lev 6:21). Of course the contents of such a vessel, supposing there were any, were not to be used.

Lev 11:34

“Every edible food (מִן before כֹּל partitive, as in Lev 4:2) upon which water comes,” - that is to say, which was prepared with water, - and “every drink that is drunk...becomes unclean in every vessel,” sc., if such an animal should fall dead upon the food, or into the drink. The traditional rendering of Lev 11:34, “every food upon which water out of such a vessel comes,” is untenable; because מַיִם without an article cannot mean such water, or this water.

Lev 11:35

Every vessel also became unclean, upon which the body of such an animal fell: such as תַּנּוּר, the earthen baking-pot (see Lev 2:4), and כִּירַיִם, the covered pan or pot. כִּיר, a boiling or roasting vessel (1Sa 2:14), can only signify, when used in the dual, a vessel consisting of two parts, i.e., a pan or pot with a lid.

Lev 11:36

Springs and wells were not defiled, because the uncleanness would be removed at once by the fresh supply of water. But whoever touched the body of the animal, to remove it, became unclean.

Lev 11:37-38

All seed-corn that was intended to be sown remained clean, namely, because the uncleanness attaching to it externally would be absorbed by the earth. But if water had been put upon the seed, i.e., if the grain had been softened by water, it was to be unclean, because in that case the uncleanness would penetrate the softened grains and defile the substance of the seed, which would therefore produce uncleanness in the fruit.