Hebrew word · H7090

קִפֹּד

kipod

porcupine

A wild animal of ruins and wasteland. It appears only three times: Isa 14:23, Isa 34:11 (Edom's ruins) and Zeph 2:14 (Nineveh's ruins). Hebrew lexicons (BDB, HALOT) favour "hedgehog" or "porcupine". Some scholars, and some translations, take it as a bird.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) porcupine, hedgehog

1a) a shrinking animal

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Isaiah 14:23

Range of meaning

A wild animal of ruins and wasteland. It appears only three times: Isa 14:23, Isa 34:11 (Edom's ruins) and Zeph 2:14 (Nineveh's ruins). Hebrew lexicons (BDB, HALOT) favour "hedgehog" or "porcupine". Some scholars, and some translations, take it as a bird.

Against the English

KJV "bittern" (a marsh heron). BSB and NIV "owls". WEB "porcupine". ESV and NASB "hedgehog". The English reader ends up with very different animals: a bird calling over the marsh, or a spiny mammal creeping through the rubble.

How it drifted

This is a question about the word itself, not a change in English over time. The bird reading comes mainly from Zeph 2:14, where the qippod "lodges in her capitals" (the tops of fallen columns), which made some readers think of a bird. Some older Jewish interpreters also had a bird in mind, and the KJV's "bittern" stands in that line.

Used elsewhere in the period

Related words in other Semitic languages: Arabic qunfudh "hedgehog" and Syriac qupdā "hedgehog/porcupine". The Greek Septuagint has echinous (hedgehogs) and the Latin Vulgate has ericius (hedgehog). Lists of creatures that move into ruins are a standard part of ancient Near Eastern curses and laments over destroyed cities. Compare Isa 13:21–22 and 34:11–15.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 2

  1. Isaiah 14:23 קִפֹּ֖ד hedgehog[s]

    “I will make her a place for owls and for swamplands; I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of Hosts.

    Here: The new "owner" of the city. The related Arabic and Syriac words mean hedgehog, and the Greek and Latin translations say hedgehog. Some English versions say "owl" or "bittern" (a marsh bird). Either way it is a shy creature of empty, abandoned places.

  2. Isaiah 34:11 וְקִפּ֔וֹד and hedgehog

    The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.

    Here: 'And the qippod.' The ancient versions and most modern dictionaries take it as the hedgehog or porcupine, a creature of abandoned places. Because it stands in a list of birds, some translators make it a bird instead (KJV 'bittern', BSB 'screech owl').

Zephaniah · 1

  1. Zephaniah 2:14 קִפֹּ֔ד hedgehog

    Herds will lie down in her midst, creatures of every kind. Both the desert owl and screech owl will roost atop her pillars. Their calls will sound from the window, but desolation will lie on the threshold, for He will expose the beams of cedar.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.