An ABOMINATION — something detestable, ritually or socially intolerable to a particular group. Genesis uses it of EGYPTIAN sensibilities, not Israelite ones: 'the Egyptians cannot eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to Egypt' (43:32), and later that shepherds are an abomination to them (46:34). The narrator reports the custom flatly, without mockery — and it quietly settles a clause left open at 39:6, where Potiphar 'knew nothing of what he had except the bread he ate.' It also leaves Joseph seated at neither table: not with the Egyptians, not with the Hebrews, eating alone between two peoples. ⚠ At Leviticus 18 (already on these pages) the word becomes a legal umbrella term rather than a report of foreign custom: incest, adultery, child sacrifice, and bestiality are all named to'evah together (18:26-30), the same single word covering the chapter's entire catalog rather than singling any one item out with harsher vocabulary. ⭐ Deuteronomy 14:3 puts it to a third use, and the placement is the argument: 'you shall not eat any to'evah' is the HEADING over the whole food law — and Leviticus 11, the chapter Deuteronomy 14 is rewriting, never uses the word at all (in Leviticus it occurs only in chapters 18 and 20). ⚠ Thirteen verses earlier the same book used it of a town that had gone after other gods (Deuteronomy 13:15). Deuteronomy is not weakening the word for food; it is putting a diet and an apostasy under one noun. Only the Geneva keeps it a bare noun in English ('no manner of abomination'); the KJV and ASV turn it into a quality, 'any abominable thing'. ⭐ The VERB behind the noun, ta'ev, is what Deuteronomy 7:26 commands toward an idol's silver — you shall utterly abominate it — and what Deuteronomy 23:8 then forbids toward two peoples: you shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land. In the Torah the intensive verb stands in two verses, and the second switches off the first for the sons of Esau and for the house of slavery. ⚠ Deuteronomy 23:19 closes with the fuller formula, an abomination to Jehovah your God, both of them alike — the sixth of the eight times the book says to'avat Jehovah, and a shape Proverbs 17:15 and 20:10 (not yet on these pages) borrow for false acquittals and false weights. ⭐ Deuteronomy 25:16 (now on these pages) is the seventh of the eight, over false weights: everyone who does injustice is an abomination to Jehovah your God. ⭐ Deuteronomy 27:15 (now on these pages) is the eighth and last: the carved and cast image set up in secret, an abomination to Jehovah, the first of the twelve curses. The two-word phrase stands in nineteen verses of the Hebrew Bible, the eight in this book and eleven in Proverbs, and nowhere else. → first discussed at Gen 43:32