Monday, September 21, 2020

Leviticus 11:1-8 comments: rules about unclean and clean animals

 

Leviticus 11:1 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them, 2  Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. 3  Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. 4  Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you. 5  And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you. 6  And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you. 7  And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. 8  Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.

 

First, what does chewing the cud mean in the Bible and at the time this Bible was translated? Simply put, without reading back modern distinctions into the 1611 Bible, animals that chew the cud eat their food, or at least some of it, twice. Ruminants, like cows, regurgitate food and re-chew it. Pseudo-ruminants, like rabbits, may re-ingest their soft poop with additional microbial processes going on in digestive parts we don’t have. The modern English word cud comes from the Old English cudu or cwidu meaning, “what has already been chewed.” It is related to an old Norse word for chewing.

A clovenfooted animal, called an even-toed ungulate, has a foot that is separated into two toes. If the animal has this clovenfoot and redigests its food it is okay to eat. If it redigests its food but has toes like a camel or rabbit it is not okay to eat. Of note here is the mention of a camel, saying that it does not divide the hoof. This is pretty advanced stuff as a camel is considered an even-toed ungulate. But, a camel’s feet are not actually hooves although each toe has a hard nail that seems like a hoof.

Remember that Christ’s finished work cleansed the ritual uncleanness of animals. See the episode with Peter in Acts, chapter 10, one of the most theologically significant chapters of the New Testament showing that no animals are unclean after Christ, that people who have not heard of Christ but believe in God and want to do right are saved showing that once Christ is preached to them they must believe or be damned, and how we Gentiles receive the Holy Ghost and then are baptized, being saved first as baptism itself does not save us.

Acts 10:1 ¶  There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, 2  A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. 3  He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. 4  And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. 5  And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: 6  He lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do. 7  And when the angel which spake unto Cornelius was departed, he called two of his household servants, and a devout soldier of them that waited on him continually; 8  And when he had declared all these things unto them, he sent them to Joppa.

 

    9 ¶  On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: 10  And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11  And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12  Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 13  And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. 14  But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or

unclean. 15  And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 16  This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. 17  Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon’s house, and stood before the gate, 18  And called, and asked whether Simon, which was surnamed Peter, were lodged there.

 

It is interesting in that Christ cleansed ritually unclean animals so that the Jews could eat them as God told Noah it was appropriate after the Flood to eat animals in general which apparently had not been done before.

Genesis 1:29  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

 

Genesis 9:2  And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 3  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

 

Speaking of Noah, apparently this concept of ritually clean and not clean animals was understood so that although they were not eaten from Abel’s time they were used as sacrifices to God.

Genesis 4:4  And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

 

Genesis 7:2  Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

 

There are a number of possibilities for the distinction between unclean and clean animals. The first reason would be that God’s people must learn to separate the clean from the unclean and that this distinction was, in type, the same as distinguishing between sin and doing right. Another possibility, at least in Noah’s time, is that the animals that were not clean may have been polluted like mankind by the fallen sons of God. Even another possibility, for Moses’ time, is that the animals marked as not clean were being used for dietary and ceremonial purposes by the heathen and God wanted to reinforce the separation of Israel from those people. Whatever the case, there were animals that were not to be eaten by the Jews even if you use the modernistic argument that the restrictions were of a sanitary nature for the health and well-being of the children of Israel.

Nevertheless, Matthew Henry pointed out in his commentary that animals were sacred in heathen religion. In his commentary, which is free online, for this passage he notes “The swine, with the later Gentiles, was sacred to Venus, the owl to Minerva, the eagle to Jupiter, the dog to Hecate, etc.,”  The strict dietary regulations given here distinguished the children of Israel from the heathen world around them. Also, predators eat the flesh of animals, scavengers eat carrion, and some shellfish are poisonous. We really cannot say why something was clean or unclean to them but we can surmise based on common sense.

I have read that the camel was considered sacred in the worship of AL-lat, the Meccan mother goddess, and chief deity of one of the Arab tribes. She was also supposedly one of the daughters of Allah. Although this particular worship may not be three thousand years old it does give us evidence of the camel’s spiritual importance to heathen tribes long before this particular goddess was worshipped.

At the time the King James Bible was translated, using the University of Toronto’s Lexicons of Early Modern English online, the coney was a rabbit or a hare. It is noted that George Gascoigne’s 1575 The Noble Art of Venery or Hunting that a young hare was called a leueret and a young conie (coney) was called a rabet (rabbit). This is also confirmed by cross-referencing in the Bible. Read Deuteronomy 14:7. The difference between a hare and a rabbit might be of interest to a hunter who wants to know their habits or a zoologist who wants to catalog them but are virtually meaningless to our study. The Bible could also be talking about a rock badger or rock hyrax, a mouse-like creature, which is also called a ‘rock rabbit’, remembering that modern classifications of animals should not be read back into the Bible. The hyrax notion is buttressed by Proverbs 30:26 although actual rabbits exist in a number of habitats including mountainous terrain. The likely understanding of the translators would be the coney or rabbit as a cousin to the hare with differences like where they live and how they react to danger. Hares live in burrows, rabbits in nests, and hares run while rabbits hide and on and on if what I read is correct. You hunters or rabbit-keepers would know better, I am sure.

The hare was worshipped in ancient earth religions as a symbol of fertility in the goddess Ishtar’s veneration. Perhaps we get the word Easter and Easter bunnies and eggs ultimately from Ishtar. Ishtar was also the goddess of freedom, exiles, immigrants, and prostitutes in ancient Babylon I have read. She has many names around the world from Amaterasu in Japan to Astarte in the ancient Near East to Aphrodite in Greece and Venus in Rome. The goddess also, in one of her many forms, was personified in the Roman goddess Libertas who stands in the harbor at New York as Lady Liberty. Anthropologists have noted that gods and goddesses can be traced back to a small number of individuals so we can see Ishtar’s many forms around the world.

Swine were sacred in Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, and even Celtic religion among others. The Greeks sacrificed pigs to the goddess, Demeter, goddess of agriculture. Some authors says that in Egypt the god, Min, was born of a white sow, one of the manifestations of Isis, the Egyptian version of Ishtar. The evil god of Egypt, Set, is sometimes depicted as a swine.

There is a principal given here. We learn in Job that God says bad things will happen to good people and they may never know the reason why in this life but we are to trust Him as He is in control of it all, no matter how painful or grievous our suffering is. Here, we learn that God gave commands to Israel and did not bother to explain Himself except to say that the unclean must be separated from the clean. Trust me, I have it under control and do what I say without expecting an explanation are two things that are bitter pills for a twenty-first century American to swallow.

There is also a lesson here for us and many potential sermons on rightly dividing the word and what constitutes bad doctrine and wrong interpretation which although derived from the Bible misrepresents God by an impious and imperfect agenda.

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