Do Rabbits Really “Chew the Cud”?
Animals were classified as either clean or unclean in the Mosaic Law. Rabbits were deemed “unclean,” meaning that Jews were not allowed to consume them or use them as sacrifices. The statement, “The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you,” served as the basis for the rabbit’s classification as “unclean.” Considering that hares and rabbits do not chew cud, this passage is sometimes cited as an illustration of a Bible mistake.
Without a doubt, rabbits do not “chew the cud” in the contemporary, scientific understanding of the expression. But that doesn’t matter because the Bible wasn’t written in contemporary English. What counts is the meaning that the translated sentence had when it was written in Hebrew. Re-digesting food after it exits the body is a process known as “refection” or “coprophagy,” which is what rabbits and hares do (that is, rabbits eat their own excrement). Additionally, it’s been seen that rabbits move their lips continuously, mimicking the way cows and other ruminants chew. Leviticus 11:6 does not intend for in-depth scientific investigation; rather, it is designed for basic identification.
The key phrase, in Hebrew, is alah gerahh. Alah is used extensively in the Old Testament, and means “to restore, take up, collect, recover, or regurgitate.” It’s used to describe the handling of money, swords, and even the Ark of the Covenant, so it doesn’t have to mean something biologically specific. The word’s broad usage doesn’t stop skeptics from claiming that the word absolutely must mean “regurgitate” and that Leviticus 11:6 is therefore a gigantic error.
Gerah is only used in Leviticus 11, so, it’s more difficult to know exactly what it means. What is clear, however, is that rabbits, like ruminants, make a constant chewing motion, and, like ruminants, they re-digest their food. We also know that the description given is pretty easy to understand: rabbits “recover” food and make a constant chewing motion. But, since they do not have a split hoof, they are unclean.
Skeptics sometimes spend an awful lot of time over-complicating issues that are actually fairly simple, and their misuse of Leviticus 11:6 is a common example of that very problem. There’s no error here. There’s no reason to cram a modern scientific explanation into the text. And there’s no cause to split hares, as it were. In reality, Leviticus 11:6 is just a simple description used for classification. God did not need to go into a lengthy tangent about the details of digestion. Rabbits indeed give the appearance of chewing cud. The biblical description says exactly what it needs to say in order for the Hebrew reader to get the point: rabbits chew, but they don’t have divided hooves, so they’re unclean, done.
The bottom line is that, to the Old Testament, Hebrew-speaking people, alah gerah described the visible actions of both cows and rabbits. In English, this phrase has been translated as “chewing the cud,” which means something slightly different to us, but it’s the closest we have. Any perceived inaccuracy here is caused by forcing meanings the original writer did not intend onto the words he used.
📌FOR FURTHER STUDY
📖 Scientific Facts In The Bible: 100 Reasons To Believe The Bible Is Supernatural In Origin.