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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