Leviticus 11 · a question people ask
Why these animals and not others?
The chapter gives signs, not a reason for each animal: a land animal must part the hoof and chew the cud (11:3), and a water creature must have "fins and scales" (11:9). For the birds it gives only a list (11:13-19). The reason it does give is about the LORD and his people: "For I am the LORD your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy" (11:44). It gives no reason of health for any animal. Christians read the purpose of the signs in a few ways, each resting on verses, and the views can be held together. All of them start from the reason the chapter itself gives (11:44-45).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A mark of a people set apart
Leviticus 20 joins these laws to Israel's calling: "I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples" (Leviticus 20:24). "You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean" (Leviticus 20:25), and "You shall be holy to me, for I, the LORD, am holy, and have set you apart from the peoples, that you should be mine" (Leviticus 20:26). Deuteronomy puts its own list of clean and unclean animals right after "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God" (Deuteronomy 14:2). When Peter saw animals in a vision, he said afterward, "God has shown me that I shouldn’t call any man unholy or unclean" (Acts 10:28). On this reading, what Israel ate marked it out from the nations.
Leviticus 20:24-26 · Deuteronomy 14:2-3 · Acts 10:9-16 · Acts 10:28
Learning to tell the difference
The chapter ends with its purpose: "to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean" (Leviticus 11:47). The priests were "to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean" (Leviticus 10:10), and "to teach the children of Israel all the statutes" (Leviticus 10:11). In Ezekiel the Lord GOD says of the priests, "They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean" (Ezekiel 44:23). On this reading, sorting what they ate trained Israel to tell holy from common in all of life.
Leviticus 11:46-47 · Leviticus 10:10-11 · Ezekiel 44:15 · Ezekiel 44:23
Obedience to the LORD who gave them
The commands rest on who gives them: "For I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 11:44). Moses told Israel, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29). On this reading, Israel kept the signs because the LORD gave them, whether or not it knew why each animal was on the list.
Leviticus 11:44 · Deuteronomy 29:29
The verses
“Whatever parts the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and chews the cud among the animals, that you may eat.”
““‘You may eat of all these that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, that you may eat.”
““‘You shall detest these among the birds; they shall not be eaten because they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.”
“For I am the LORD your God. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any kind of creeping thing that moves on the earth. For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”