But the following among all the teeming life and creatures in the water are detestable to you: everything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales.
Here is, 1. A general rule concerning fishes, which were clean and which not. All that had fins and scales they might eat, and only those odd sorts of water-animals that have not were forbidden, Lev 11:9, Lev 11:10. The ancients accounted fish the most delicate food (so far were they from allowing it on fasting-days, or making it an instance of mortification to eat...
Commenting on Leviticus 11:9-19
And all that have not fins nor scales in the seas, and in the rivers,.... Such as eels, lampreys, &c. of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters; the former of these are interpreted by Aben Ezra and Ben Gersom of little fishes that have but a small body, and such as are created out of...
And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which [is] in the waters, they [shall be] an abomination unto you: (d) As little fish begotten in the slime. (e) As they which come of generation.