Right after the warning that a priest must be able to “put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean,” God gives Israel a lesson in telling the difference that they will practise at every meal. Some creatures may be eaten; some may not. The reason attached to the rule is not hygiene and not the sanctuary — it is four words: for I am holy.
A study in Leviticus 11 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
These Are The Beasts Which Ye Shall Eat
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.”
Leviticus 11:2-3
Two marks together: a split hoof and a chewed cud. Both, or the animal is off the table. The clean land animals turn out to be the grazing herbivores — ox, sheep, goat, deer — the same animals brought to the altar. What Israel ate and what Israel offered were drawn from the same short list. This is not a new idea at Sinai: Noah already knew “clean beasts” from unclean and took them into the ark by sevens (Genesis 7:2), long before there was a tabernacle or a ceremonial law.
The Swine Is Unclean To You
“And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.”
Leviticus 11:7-8
The pig has the right feet and the wrong gut. It fails one test of the two, and one failure is enough. Scripture keeps coming back to it as the type-case of the forbidden thing — Isaiah names those who eat “swine’s flesh” among the rebellious (Isaiah 65:4; 66:17). The swine is a scavenger; it will eat anything, and its body carries what it eats. The rule reads like a warning label.
Whatsoever Hath Fins And Scales
“These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.”
Leviticus 11:9
Again a simple two-part test, and again it screens out the bottom-feeders and filter-feeders — the shellfish, the catfish, the eel — the creatures that clean the water by taking its waste into themselves. The birds forbidden in the same chapter are the birds of prey and the carrion eaters. A pattern runs through the whole list: the unclean animal is very often the one that lives on death and filth.
Ye Shall Be Holy; For I Am Holy
“For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy… For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”
Leviticus 11:44-45
The reason God gives is not “because these foods will make you sick” — though they often will — but “because I am holy, and I brought you out.” The body belongs to the God who redeemed it, and how it is fed is part of belonging to Him. This is the argument the New Testament keeps: “ye are not your own… therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Because the ground of the rule is God’s own character and His act of redemption, it does not expire the way the sacrifices did; it rests on something that does not change.
“In choosing man’s food in Eden, the Lord showed what was the best diet; in the choice made for Israel He taught the same lesson… Upon their settlement in Canaan, the Israelites were permitted the use of animal food, but under careful restrictions which tended to lessen the evil results. The use of swine’s flesh was prohibited, as also of other animals and of birds and fish whose flesh was pronounced unclean.”
Ellen G. White · The Ministry of Healing, p. 311
To Make A Difference
“This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth: To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.”
Leviticus 11:46-47
The chapter ends where chapter 10 began: making a difference. Three times a day, at every table in Israel, an ordinary family practised the discernment that a drunk priest had lost — this is clean, that is not; this belongs on God’s table, that does not. Peter’s rooftop vision of the sheet full of unclean animals (Acts 10) unsettled him precisely because he had kept this law his whole life; its point, he says plainly, was that “God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28). The next studies move from the food on the table to the uncleanness that touches the body itself.
