Pygarg

The pygarg is one of the seven clean game animals that Israel was permitted to eat under the dietary instructions in Deuteronomy. The name appears once, embedded in a single list, and is generally taken to designate a species of antelope.

A Clean Game Animal

The pygarg stands in the middle of the catalogue of permitted wild quadrupeds: "the hart, and the gazelle, and the roebuck, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the antelope, and the chamois" (Deut 14:5). The seven animals are grouped together as cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing creatures fit for the table, distinguished from the unclean species that follow in the same chapter.