hoof: the hard, horny foot of a grazing animal or horse
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The word names the hoof, the hard covering on the foot of a grazing animal or a horse. Whether it speaks of a single hoof or a whole herd's hooves, it always points to the same thing.
It turns up in two very different settings:
- In Israel's food laws (Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14) the hoof is the test of a clean animal: a creature the people may eat both chews the cud and has a hoof split fully in two.
- In poetry and prophecy it is the pounding hoof of horses, counted hard as flint under a charging army (Isaiah 5:28; Jeremiah 47:3; Ezekiel 26:11), or the bronze hoof of Zion pictured as an ox treading out grain (Micah 4:13).
One detail is easy to trip on: the idea of a "divided" or "cloven" hoof does not live in this word. In the food laws the splitting is stated by a separate verb standing next to it; on its own the word simply means the hoof. The same plain sense lies behind the idiom in Exodus 10:26, where "not a hoof shall be left behind" means not a single head of livestock.
Exo 10:26Lev 11:3 (2×)Lev 11:4 (2×)Lev 11:5Lev 11:6Lev 11:7 (2×)Lev 11:26Deu 14:6 (2×)Deu 14:7 (2×)Deu 14:8Isa 5:28Jer 47:3