Weird Stuff in the Bible

Weird OT Laws: Clean and Unclean Foods
Leviticus 11

Introduction
I hope you enjoy your bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, your gummy bears, your Hawaiian Pizza, your Shrimp Tacos, your Crab Rangoons, and your Sausage Egg McMuffins. Because all of these foods are forbidden under the Old Testament law.
Thankfully, we don’t live under the Old Testament law!
Although I do still think we should forbid ham and pineapple pizza. I probably would be willing to go back under the Old Testament law to stop pineapple on pizza. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to Jesus. And Jesus said in:
Acts 10:15
What God has made clean, do not call common.
Why did Jesus have to say this in the New Testament? Because back in the Old Testament, God had declared certain foods to be unclean- and therefore forbidden to eat.
But the list seems a little random. Scholars have puzzled and debated for centuries over why certain foods were acceptable and certain foods weren’t.
God gave the Israelites these rules as they set off on their journey through the desert after they left Egypt. And apparently, God didn’t want them stopping at a Red Lobster as they were wandering through the wilderness.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Leviticus 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Eat What You Want
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about why certain foods were deemed clean and unclean in the Old Testament law. We’re going to be looking at Leviticus 11 today.
Now, I have never preached a sermon, taught a Sunday school or created a podcast about Leviticus 11 before. And you have probably never heard one. So that actually makes this a little special that we’re going to spend the next 25 minutes or so talking about what this chapter says.
Because it is one of those puzzling things as to exactly why certain foods were banned. And I want to bring some theories and context to the table that might help us to understand why God didn’t let the Israelites have bacon.
But before I do that, I do just want to make this PSA or qualifying statement before I say another word: the New Testament does clearly and plainly teach that we aren’t to forbid certain foods anymore.
You can read Acts 10 and 11 for when this new decree was handed down from heaven. You can also look at Romans 14, I Corinthians 10 or I Timothy 4. Starting in the First Century and continuing all the way up until today, particular foods are no longer sinful to eat.
There’s certain things that might not be good for you. Like if you eat too many jelly beans, your body might start to resemble the shape and texture of a jelly bean. But it’s not necessarily a sin.
It could have been under the Old Testament law, if the jelly beans contain gelatin. But it’s not a sin today.
By the way, I learned some rather horrifying things about jelly beans as I was researching jelly beans for this podcast, and I probably won’t be eating anymore jelly beans, but you do you. It’s not a sin. And don’t listen to any bible teacher who tells you it would be a sin to eat the unclean animals of the Mosaic law. In fact, let me just quote
I Timothy 4 before we go on:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
So what I was saying earlier about Hawaiian pizza was a joke, please take it as such. Technically, the pineapple isn’t even the part that was forbidden, it was the ham. I don’t know if the Israelites put pineapple on their pizza, but I do know they didn’t put pepperoni, ham or Italian sausage on it, because it was forbidden for them. And although I’ll forbid anyone to put pineapple on my pizza, it is not forbidden by God. And neither are jelly beans- but I won’t tell you why you shouldn’t eat them. You can look it up yourself if you want.
So with that caveat out of the way- because I don’t want anyone to listen to half of this episode today and walk away saying, “Well I can’t even eat breakfast at Dennys anymore without breaking like 6 commandments,” don’t worry, this is Old Testament technicalities that no longer apply. And don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you they do. The New Testament is clear.

Leviticus 11’s clean and unclean animals
So with that out of the way, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do. I’d like to read a chunk of verses here that talk about clean and unclean animals in Leviticus. It’s gonna go on for a good minute or two; don’t click off the episode and give up. I know it’s not the most fascinating passage of Scripture. But we’ll power through it; it’s gonna distinguish between animals based on categories that really don’t mean much to us, and then we will spend the rest of the episode talking about what it might mean.
Leviticus 11:1-23
1 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.
Alright, we’ll stop there. That’s actually only half the chapter, guys. It goes on, but now you’ve heard the most important part.
So God gives a few delineations between what makes an animal clean and what makes it unclean. And it’s broken up by categories. For land animals, you can eat animals with cloven hoofs and animals that chew cud. But you can’t eat animals that do one and not the other. So camels are off limits because they chew cud, but they don’t have cloven hoofs. For sea animals, you can eat animals with fins and scales, but not sea creatures who don’t have fins and scales.
That’s a weird standard for us. I have never been at the Walmart deli and asked the person behind the counter, “Did this animal have a cloven hoof?” But these are the considerations that ancient Israelites were supposed to have.
So, why? That’s what we’re here to figure out today. So I’m going to give you two popular theories that are probably wrong for what makes a clean or unclean animal, and then I’ll give you a couple theories that are probably right. And what I like about the theories that are probably right is that- if they are right- they teach us something about the heart of God.

The health and Sanitation Theory
So theory 1 (that’s probably wrong): sanitation and health. That this was about literal cleanliness. That would have been my first bet: that this is about sanitation, because that’s what the word “clean” means.
Well, that makes sense on some of the animals, like vultures, because vultures are very unsanitary animals. They eat roadkill. Pigs make sense; there are often health concerns with consumption of pork, especially thousands of years ago when they didn’t have the FDA or a health department. Shrimp: they are kind of the scavengers of the ocean, so it makes some logical sense why they and other shellfish might be ruled out.
The problem with this theory is that if it was about sanitation and hygiene and health, then why was this restriction lifted in the New Testament? When Jesus died on the cross, it didn’t change the composition of pigs and shrimp. So if it was simply about hygiene, if pigs and shrimp were unclean before, they’d still be unclean now. So the health and sanitation theory just doesn’t answer all the questions.

The Religious Theory
There’s another theory that I think is probably wrong, but this is another popular speculation as to why certain animals were unclean. Some scholars posit that the unclean animals are the animals who were prominent in pagan worship in the surrounding Middle East culture back in bible times.
So they’d say that it was wrong to eat owls because owls were associated with death and the goddess Lilith in Middle Eastern culture. They’d say it’s wrong to eat falcons because falcons were venerated in Egyptian culture, such as in worship of their god Horus.
The problem on this theory is that no animal was more prominent in pagan worship than the bull. The most frequently mentioned pagan god of the Old Testament, Baal, was represented as a bull. So if certain animals were declared unclean by God on the basis of their association with pagan worship, bulls should have been the first ones ruled out; yet they are creatures who part the hoof and chew the cud, so they’re clean under Mosaic law.
So that’s why we can probably also rule out the religious theory of clean and unclean animals.

The Mixture Theory
Now for a theory that I think has more legs, and this is what I’ll call the mixture theory. I’ve also heard it called the Creation theory, but I’ll call it the mixture theory and I’ll explain why.
When God created the world, He gave some specific categories in Genesis 1:28 - “the fish of the sea and…the birds of the heavens and…every living thing that moves on the earth.” So three categories: swimming creatures, flying creatures, and land creatures.
We see a similar categorization come up here in Leviticus 11, although Leviticus 11 also makes a distinction between four-footed animals and insects when it talks about land creatures. So under this theory, what makes a land animal a land animal is that it grazes for food on the ground and has hooves that are suitable for pasture environments. What makes a sea creature a sea creature is that it has fins and scales.
There are some creatures who live in a certain domain but don’t check all the boxes for their domain. Vultures and other creatures who eat carrion, for instance, have a domain in the air but they graze for food along the ground. This represents a mixture, or a blending of two different domains. Eels don’t have scales, and scales are considered to be what makes a sea creature a sea creature, they just have smooth, slimy skin- more like a land animal- so eels represent a mixture of two different domains.
So what makes the mixture theory attractive to me is that it does seem kind of arbitrary to our hearing, but it fits with the forbidden mixture concepts we see frequently in other places of the Old Testament law. For example:
Leviticus 19:19
You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.
Well, what’s the problem here with these things? They represent mixtures. God likes category distinctions. Clear boundaries. And God doesn’t like us to transgress certain boundaries. He wants clear categories. It’s the exact same reason He says in:
Deuteronomy 22:5
A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
Men are supposed to dress and look one way, women another. This is important because we live in such a time with a lot of gender confusion. God wants clarity when it comes to what men look like and what women look like.
I think this is the gist of Paul’s argument in I Corinthians 11, and I covered that chapter in episode 29. And we talked about long hair and short hair. Hey guys: I am not the hair police. I don’t really care how long your hair is or how short you want it cut. I don’t judge how short a woman wants to cut her hair or how long a man grows his out. What I think is important is the gender distinction. I think when you see a man, it should be clear that He’s a man; and the same with women. It should be clear that a woman is a woman, and God doesn’t appreciate the blurring of these lines because it brings confusion. And what we see in our society today is a lot of blurring of the lines with how people dress and present themselves.
One more example of this category or mixture distinction is:
Deuteronomy 22:10
You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.
Why does it matter? These two animals are unequally yoked. And that is something God doesn’t approve of; God uses this principle to discuss us being unequally yoked with unbelievers in the New Testament in II Corinthians 6.
Sometimes people mock the Bible by pointing out some of these laws because they sound random and kind of silly. But what links them all together is this idea of mixture, or mixing two different things that are supposed to be distinct. Transgressing clear boundaries.
This concept was to teach the Israelites principles of not mixing themselves with the surrounding people, mixing themselves with pagan culture and idolatrous practices, and mixing themselves in marriage with unbelieving foreign people. These would all be impure mixtures, and God wants us to be kept pure.
And so under this view or theory, the dietary laws of the Old Testament are there to teach the Israelites about mixtures. Again, where the line is drawn might sound a bit arbitrary, but the point of the line was to keep the Israelites separate from the practices of the surrounding people, and that separation was called holiness.
Galatians 3:24 says in the King Jimmy Version, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” The law of the Old Testament is a teacher. You will often see Paul citing the Old Testament law to teach us principles we live by in the New Testament. Look at Deuteronomy 22:10 and II Corinthians 6:14. Look at Deuteronomy 25:4 and I Timothy 5:18. God used the Old Testament law to teach the Israelites- and us- concepts about keeping ourselves distinct and holy. This concept is important in the mixture theory, and also in one more we’ll look at today: the Ethics Theory.

The Ethics Theory
This theory is one I find the most interesting, and it posits that God marked certain animals as unclean to teach us about His heart for human beings. That the laws about what foods they were allowed to eat was meant to teach the Israelites something about how they treat other people.
So Dr. Paul Copan wrote a book called “Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God,” and in this book, he discusses the idea that the distinction in clean and unclean animals is more about teaching us human ethics than it is about sanitation.
Now, why would eating certain animals have anything to do with human ethics? Copan goes through examples in that book of how animals are described in Leviticus in similar ways to how it talks about people. Phrases like “without defect,” “clean and unclean,” “without blemish.”
When it comes to the predatory animals that Leviticus says we shouldn’t eat, here is what Copan says: …animals of the air (owls, gulls, hawks, and carrion-eaters such as vultures) are forbidden in Israel's diet because they themselves have consumed blood; they're predatory. Remember the prohibition against eating blood in Genesis 9:4, suggesting respect for life, which is in the blood: "the life of all flesh is its blood" (Lev. 17:14).
So that would be why some animals are condemned; it may be because they are predatory. They consume blood. And I thought, that’s an interesting idea.
God didn’t want the Israelites associating with these predatory creatures. He didn’t want humans eating blood or being a predatory type of people.
But not all the animals on the forbidden animals list are predators. What did a shrimp or a lizard ever do to anybody? These “unclean animals” represent the victims in the animal kingdom because they lack the resources that come naturally to some other animals. It’s a lot easier to survive in the ocean if you have fins and scales, so those animals are fair game. It’s harder for animals who lack those features to survive in that environment, so God places them off limits because, frankly, they already have it hard enough. God doesn’t want us to take advantage of them in their weakness.
Mary Douglas, a London scholar, wrote this in an article called Why Certain Animals Are Forbidden in Leviticus: …consider the list, especially the swarming insects, the chameleon with its lumpy face, the high humped tortoise and beetle, and the ants labouring under their huge loads.
Think of the blindness of worms and bats, the vulnerability of fish without scales. Think of their human parallels, the labourers, the beggars, the orphans, and the defenceless widows. Not themselves but the behavior that reduces them to this state is an abomination. No wonder the Lord made the crawling things and found them good (Gen. 1:31). It is not in the grand style of Leviticus to take time off from cosmic themes to teach that these pathetic creatures are to be shunned because their bodies are disgusting, vile, bad, any more than it is consistent with its theme of justice to teach that the poor are to be shunned.
Shunning is not the issue. Predation is wrong, eating is a form of predation, and the poor are not to be a prey.
So in other words, certain animals are off-limits because they’re weak, and God doesn’t want humans preying on the weak animals. Likewise, God wouldn’t want us taking advantage of society’s poor and downtrodden people, so there is a human ethic behind not just how we treat people, but even how we treat the “poor and downtrodden” animals.
I thought that was an interesting theory as well. It doesn’t necessarily contradict the mixture theory, but kind of goes hand-in-hand with it.
So there we go: that’s the first and probably last Bible study you will ever hear on Leviticus 11.

Next Time
But it doesn’t have to be the last Bible study you ever hear on Leviticus, because if you tune in next time, I want to tackle some more of the weird and puzzling laws that we come across in the Book of Leviticus. So over the next week or two, we will discuss questions like:
Does the book of Exodus say it’s OK to beat your slave as long as you don’t kill him?
Why did one dude get the death penalty for picking up some sticks for firewood in the book of Numbers?
And does God’s law allow for polygamy? A lot of Christians who argue against polygamy go to Genesis 1 and 2, but Leviticus will actually get you your clearest answer on whether God approves of men having multiple wives.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get those episodes!
And today we have been talking about clean and unclean animals. But have you noticed that the New Testament often refers to demons as unclean spirits? Why does it do that? There is actually a connection in the subject matter we’ve been discussing today.
But if I went into it, we would’ve gone down a whole long rabbit trail. And I save my rabbit trails for the newsletter. So if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet and you’d like to get the next one, go to the show notes and click the link to sign yourself up for the newsletter. I don’t even need your name, just an email. And if you find this episode a few weeks or months later and think, well shoot, I missed that email and now I’m angrier than a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach; don’t worry. You can use that same newsletter link to find all the past newsletter episodes so you can catch yourself up.
Now, is a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach actually an angry animal? I have no idea, but probably. I mean, the first three letters of his name are m-a-d. His middle name is literally “hissing.” And his last name informs us that he’s a cockroach. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be happy if I was a cockroach.
And by the way, cockroaches are unclean animals under Levitical law. Now, Levitical law doesn’t necessarily have to guide our food choices today, but I think I’ll still avoid cockroaches. Personally, I don’t want to eat any insects. And you probably don’t want to either. So here’s your reminder to research. where. you get. your jelly beans.
However, under the New Testament upgrade given via the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we have been freed from the law, specifically in the area of food.
One aspect of the Old Testament law is that even though the rules and regulations and where God draws the line on this or that could appear a bit random and janky, God was trying to create a peculiar people who stood out from the rest of the world. A people with a unique culture, a unique way to dress, a unique way to worship, and even a unique way to eat. This is true of all cultures; they all have their own distinct styles and foods.
But in the New Testament, God removed a lot of these cultural barriers from His people because now His people were not confined to one specific nation anymore. God was giving access to Himself to all people in all places. You don’t have to be a part of the nation or culture or dietary customs of Israel anymore to be a follower of God.
Sadly, many modern Jewish people who still live under Old Testament dietary restrictions don’t get to enjoy a lot of the foods that God has intended all men to eat freely today. So if you meet a Jewish unbeliever, give them the Gospel- and then give them a bologna sandwich and show them what they’ve been missing.
And if eating a bacon-wrapped, shrimp-stuffed, sausage-topped, ham-glazed lobster roll sounds weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. But I also hope your cholesterol is not too high before you try it. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.