Leviticus 11--Clean and Unclean Animals

Leviticus 11
English Standard Version

Clean and Unclean Animals
11 And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth. 3 Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 4 Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these: The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 5 And the rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 6 And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 7 And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. 8 You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.

9 “These you may eat, of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. 10 But anything in the seas or the rivers that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you. 11 You shall regard them as detestable; you shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall detest their carcasses. 12 Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you.

13 “And these you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, 14 the kite, the falcon of any kind, 15 every raven of any kind, 16 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk of any kind, 17 the little owl, the cormorant, the short-eared owl, 18 the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, 19 the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.

20 “All winged insects that go on all fours are detestable to you. 21 Yet among the winged insects that go on all fours you may eat those that have jointed legs above their feet, with which to hop on the ground. 22 Of them you may eat: the locust of any kind, the bald locust of any kind, the cricket of any kind, and the grasshopper of any kind. 23 But all other winged insects that have four feet are detestable to you.

24 “And by these you shall become unclean. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean until the evening, 25 and whoever carries any part of their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. 26 Every animal that parts the hoof but is not cloven-footed or does not chew the cud is unclean to you. Everyone who touches them shall be unclean. 27 And all that walk on their paws, among the animals that go on all fours, are unclean to you. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean until the evening, 28 and he who carries their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening; they are unclean to you.

29 “And these are unclean to you among the swarming things that swarm on the ground: the mole rat, the mouse, the great lizard of any kind, 30 the gecko, the monitor lizard, the lizard, the sand lizard, and the chameleon. 31 These are unclean to you among all that swarm. Whoever touches them when they are dead shall be unclean until the evening. 32 And anything on which any of them falls when they are dead shall be unclean, whether it is an article of wood or a garment or a skin or a sack, any article that is used for any purpose. It must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the evening; then it shall be clean. 33 And if any of them falls into any earthenware vessel, all that is in it shall be unclean, and you shall break it. 34 Any food in it that could be eaten, on which water comes, shall be unclean. And all drink that could be drunk from every such vessel shall be unclean. 35 And everything on which any part of their carcass falls shall be unclean. Whether oven or stove, it shall be broken in pieces. They are unclean and shall remain unclean for you. 36 Nevertheless, a spring or a cistern holding water shall be clean, but whoever touches a carcass in them shall be unclean. 37 And if any part of their carcass falls upon any seed grain that is to be sown, it is clean, 38 but if water is put on the seed and any part of their carcass falls on it, it is unclean to you.

39 “And if any animal which you may eat dies, whoever touches its carcass shall be unclean until the evening, 40 and whoever eats of its carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. And whoever carries the carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening.

41 “Every swarming thing that swarms on the ground is detestable; it shall not be eaten. 42 Whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, any swarming thing that swarms on the ground, you shall not eat, for they are detestable. 43 You shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, and you shall not defile yourselves with them, and become unclean through them. 44 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. 45 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.”

​46 This is the law about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground, 47 to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten.

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Remember that the priests were just instructed to always instruct the people about what is holy and what is common and what is clean and what is unclean.  They know are going to receive a large set of rules that they are supposed to be teaching the people.  All of this is the Law of God, though clearly some fall into the "moral/immoral" meaning of "clean/unclean" while other parts of the Law will fall into the "healthy/unhealthy" meaning of "clean/unclean."  For the people of God at that time, there was really no distinction though as there wasn't the need for them to ask God why He made the rule in order for them to know they had to obey it--that is part of our rebellious nature.  It was enough for them to have seen the glory of the LORD and to get a glimpse of His holiness there on Mount Sinai with the rocks splitting and the earth shaking and the fire and smoke that caused them to fear to go anywhere near the mountain.  They saw the power of God and knew that the correct response when He asked them to obey His commandments was "We will," even though He knew they would not.

You might find at least one of these prohibitions interesting in today's culture given that we are told that coronavirus came from bats and see in verse 19 that bats were considered unclean.  I know some people try to look at that verse and say "look how dumb the Bible is, it calls bats birds and we know better than that now--we know they are mammals."  Okay, for anyone thinking like that, the taxonomy of the Bible is different than the taxonomy of today as it was based off of the days of creation and what was created on what day.  This will be a bit of a tangent, but let's go back to Genesis 1 for a minute as it might help us understand some of the groupings here.  Remember that in days 1-3, God created different spaces (containers if you will) by dividing things from one another.  On Day 1 He created time and space by separating light from dark and the earth from everything else in the universe  On Day 2, He separated the waters above (maybe a canopy of water around the Earth) from the waters below and called the expanse in-between "sky" or some translations will say "heaven" (This is the idea we get later in the Bible of the 1st heaven as the sky, the 2nd heaven being the home of the stars, and the 3rd heaven being the place where the throne of God exists).  On Day 3 He caused the waters to be divided into seas and for dry land to appear and the vegetation of all kinds to grow and bear fruit on the land so that it was prepared for the animals that He was about to create.  (Notice there's no division here at this time between various kinds of plant life).

Days 4 through Day 6 filled these containers in a parallel fashion.  Day 4 filled the rest of space with the sun, moon, stars and we would also assume the other planets and celestial beings that had the functionality of helping us tell time, days and seasons, giving or reflecting light, and being markers for navigation for us.  This is an explanation as to why there may be a distinction from "the sun" and "the stars" even though we know the sun is a star because the sun was there to help us with the passing of time during the day, the moon with the passing of time at night and keeping track of months, and the stars with seasons and planets with seasons and other longer periods of time--all were related to the division between light and darkness though on Day 1.  On Day 5, God filled the "sky" and other animals fill the "sea."  I think it's fair to say that all of the things that filled the sky were probably thought of as "birds" and all the things of the sea were probably thought of as "fish."  Lastly, God created the land-dwelling creatures on Day 6.  We have a bit more "division" given to us here that is going to be reflected in Leviticus--livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth.  Holy (different, set apart, and separate) from all of these was man who was also made on Day 6, but his role was to have dominion over all the other creatures and to act ask prophet, priest and king.  He was to speak to the creation for God (prophet), speak to God for creation and bear its iniquity upon himself (priest) and rule with the authority that God had given him to protect the creation and foster an environment for God's commands ("Be fruitful and multiply") to be fulfilled by cultivating the Garden (providing good culture) and obeying God's commands himself.

That was a long aside, but now that we understand a bit about biblical taxonomy and where it comes from, the lists of clean and unclean creatures and the divisions between them here in Leviticus might make some more sense as each of these groups that we have from creation are now going to be separated into "clean" and "unclean."  We'll see the "clean" animals are fit for eating and sacrificing while the unclean animals are fit for neither eating nor sacrificing and are to be completely avoided by the people of God.  We know today that many of these animals carry and spread diseases and that God's rules here protected His people, but, again, it was not necessary for them to understand about germs and pathogens to obey the word of God.  They heard the commandment and they obeyed it, and it was the job of the priests (specifically the sons of Aaron) to teach these distinctions and rules to the people, to monitor compliance, and to enforce the punishments prescribed--which usually were that the person had to be excommunicated from the community (or at least separated for a time) as God knew that the person risked infection that was dangerous to the entire congregation.  If the whole world was in compliance with the Law of God today would we have any issues like what we are experiencing today with COVID-19?  Maybe, but probably not.

​We're going to start with animals made on Day 6 and work our way backwards to the animals created on Day 5.  We start with the livestock and get rules that say that any animal with a split hoof and that chews its cud is "clean" but any animal with only a split hoof or only chews its cud or does neither is "unclean."  There are then several examples most notably though are swine who have a split hoof but do not chew their cud and the camel because it chews its cud bud does not have a split hoof.  This taxonomy is fairly simple to follow for livestock.

Next comes the rules for what seafood they could eat, and the rules again are pretty straightforward.  Anything with both fins and scales is "clean," but anything without fins or without scales is "unclean."  This prohibits the eating of any shellfish or dolphins or whales for instance, but sharks would be okay because they have both fins and scales.  The same rule applied for freshwater creatures as saltwater creatures.  Again, it was pretty straightforward here.

Now comes the hard part.  The "birds" are split up into categories that we have to guess what it is that makes them "clean" and "unclean."  No definite rule is given for them, but it seems like any bird that preys off of flesh that had already died (carrion) or other "unclean" things or that could not fly was also considered "unclean."  As already mentioned, we also see that bats are prohibited here, probably because of their diet, but we know now from science this is because they carry lots of diseases that men can catch even by coming in contact with their guano, but definitely be being bitten by them or eating them.

The rules about what bugs and insects were "clean" was much more clear-cut.  They had to have wings, have jointed legs above their feet and which hop on the ground (basically locusts, crickets and grasshoppers).  All other bugs and insects were considered "unclean" and were to be considered "detestable." (No issues there!)

Now comes another prohibition.  Even the carcass of an unclean animal will make someone unclean until evening (when the next day started as "there was evening and there was morning" in the account of creation).  The person who touches any part of these carcasses would be unclean and would need to bathe and wash their clothes and wait until evening before reentering the community (basically a quarantine).  We see here that both cats and dogs and anything else that walks on all-fours with paws are considered unclean and their carcasses will also cause someone to become unclean.  Maybe this makes better sense now why we will see dogs running wild in the streets in the Old Testament and never see them as pets.  Now for the strange rule, but it makes sense--if seed was contaminated by the carcass of any unclean creature before being put into the ground and it had not yet begun to sprout, the plant had been protected by the protective covering of the seed and the plant is clean, but if the plant had already been watered and had started to sprout and then came in contact with the carcass of something unclean, then that plant is now also unclean and they should not eat of the plant or its fruit.  The same prohibitions were also in effect for the carcass of any "clean" animal of which they could eat.  They were not to touch and definitely not eat from carcasses that they found lying around.  You may think "who would want to do that?," but it was not uncommon at that time and there are still some places today where this is an issue.

We also see prohibitions about some animals that should have already been clearly prohibited if we would be paying attention to the rules thus far, but just to be clear rodents and reptiles of all kinds are unclean, and anything made of cloth, wood, or skin on which their carcass falls on must be put in water and will be unclean until evening, but anything made of pottery on or in which they die must be broken (never be able to be used again) and any food or drink that was in that vessel is now unclean and cannot be consumed.  Even if you were to find the carcass of one of these animals on or in your oven/stove, it would have to be smashed to pieces and you would need a new one.  God knew just how bad the plagues were that these kinds of animals carried and transmitted.  God made provision so that if something died and fell into the water supply for the people that the water supply would not be considered unclean (though the people were careful to cover their wells so as to prevent this from happening), but whoever removed the dead animal from the well or cistern would be unclean until evening.  This is one of the reasons though that we see moving water called "living water" in some places in the Bible (and we see that's what the woman that the well is thinking about in John 4).  The problem of disease-infected water was a problem with stagnant water, but moving, "living," water would carry away the "bad" water and bring in fresh water after the unclean thing had been removed.  "Living water" was rare for the people that lived in the desert as it would have to come from underground aquifers and springs.

There are a few other kinds of animals that there may be questions about, but this last set of rules should take care of all of them.  Every "swarming thing" (bug/insect) that moves on its belly (these probably included worms), all-fours, or on many legs were unclean (with the exception of the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets given earlier).  I don't know what the people would be doing with these creatures to defile themselves, but it probably has something to do with what they had experienced in Egypt who we know worshiped certain insects (like scarabs).  They were not to defile themselves in this way and were to be holy (separate from the other nations) because the Lord their God was holy--we'll see this verse quoted in the New Testament as a command that we too are still supposed to follow as we too are called to be holy.

These are the distinctions about clean and unclean that all the people were supposed to know and observe and that all the sons of Aaron were supposed to teach to the people throughout all generations so that the wrath of God would not come upon them, and they were to be careful to never offer anything unclean on the altar as a sacrifice to the LORD.

Before we leave this topic, I know some of you have probably already been thinking, "Why do I care about this in light of Acts 10:15 (we see the actual interpretation of that in Acts 10:28), Matthew 15:11, and I Corinthians 10:25?  Like Paul I tell you to listen to the Holy Spirit and your conscience, but I see nothing in any of these passages that actually changes the Law.  The passage in Acts is usually the one most referred to, but Peter clearly interprets that for us a few verses later to tell us that it had nothing to do with food, but had everything to do with the people that Peter was calling "unclean" whom God  had made clean as they were also Christians.  It was because Peter chose not to associate with Gentiles that Paul called him out in the book of Galatians, and we never see Jesus, Peter or Paul or any of the others say that it's now okay to eat any unclean food--the closest you might get is a combination of what Jesus says about it not being what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what comes out of Him.  We'll sometimes see parenthetically next to this verse (in this Jesus declared all food to be clean), but the parentheses denote that we think this is commentary added later in someone's manuscript and that it may have been copied and not part of the original text as its not in all copies of the text that we've found.  Jesus' point here in Matthew is about sin being something internal and an issue of rebellion and not something that happens to us but something inside of us--a problem with our nature and we need to be made new.  No one is going to hell simply because they touched something dead or ate the wrong kind of animal--every man is already "unclean" because of the sin nature that is within him and his rebellion against God--that doesn't mean that all of a sudden the things God called "unclean" are suddenly "clean."  The prohibitions that God put in place were for the protection of His people then and there would be nothing wrong with following these same guidelines now with the understanding that nothing in the Law saves us, but it is there for our protection.  I personally don't follow a Kosher diet (I still eat ham, bacon, and shrimp for instance) but I'm not going to eat bugs, lizards, snakes, rats, or bats (just to name a few of the things here).  All the rules make sense to me even though I know that they don't have to make sense to me for me to follow them, but I'm not going to start talking about eating pork barbeque in heaven either as I know Jesus said that not one jot or tittle of the Law would pass away and Jesus only ever restored the original intent of the Law and made it about people's hearts and calling them to be holy as the Lord their God is holy.  So, maybe there is more here for us than we think there is.  Am I ready to give up pepperoni, sausage, bacon, ham and so many other things? Probably not yet.  Am I ready to never own a cat or dog as a pet?  Probably not that right now either.  Am I willing to live a life that distinctively different from the world and the cultures around me including what I will eat for the glory of God?  Ah, now that's a much better question and one that all of us should be willing to answer, because if our answer is "No," then it is our bellies and our own lusts that we are serving instead of the Lord God who has called us "out of Egypt" to be a people unlike the ones we left to be "holy unto the LORD" so that all may see His glory through our new identity and culture