Deuteronomy14chapter 14

Detestable is the word over the whole list that follows, the animals, water creatures and birds Israel must not eat, and verse 21 closes it with the carcass and the young goat. Albert Barnes sets the list beside Leviticus 11. Daniel 1:8 shows the rule kept in exile.

Deuteronomy 14:4-8

Leviticus 11:2-8 gave the two tests and named only four animals that fail them. Deuteronomy names ten clean beasts outright, seven of them wild game, which fits the permission at 12:15 to eat the gazelle and deer at home. Readers have differed over the claim that the camel and the rabbit chew the cud, some holding that it reports what a herdsman watching the animal sees.

The seven wild animals of this verse carry Hebrew names that English versions render in different ways. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown hold that the King James fallow deer is an antelope, the fallow deer being unknown in Western Asia. Albert Barnes takes the pygarg for a gazelle.

An animal must carry both marks, the divided hoof and the chewed cud. The ox, the sheep and the goat of verse 4 pass both, and John Gill notes that they were also the only beasts used in sacrifice. Verses 7 and 8 then give the hard cases.

Leviticus 11:4-6 names the same three animals and gives each one its own verse and the same reason. Each chews the cud and lacks the divided hoof. Clement of Alexandria counted such animals as the first class the law forbade, those without the cloven foot.

The pig reverses the case of verse 7, with the divided hoof and without the cud. The phrase unclean for you lays the rule on Israel, and Matthew Henry reads it as a mark of Israel's separate calling that the gospel has since repealed. Mark 7:19 declares all foods clean.

Deuteronomy 14:9-20

Water creatures get a test and no list, “fins and scales”, so the rule reaches species nobody has named. The birds are handled the other way, by naming what is forbidden, and this list runs to twenty-one where Leviticus 11:13-19 gives twenty. Leviticus 11:21-22 allowed four kinds of leaping insect, and the Targum of Jonathan and Aben Ezra supply that exception to verse 19.

Leviticus 11:10-12 gives this rule three verses and calls such creatures detestable and an abomination. Deuteronomy says it in one clause with the word unclean. Clement of Alexandria named fish without scales as a class of their own among the foods the law forbade.

Any clean bird may be eaten. Verses 12 to 18 name the unclean birds, and the law gives no mark of a clean one. John Gill reports the marks the Targum supplies: a craw, a naked crop and a spare talon.

Leviticus 11:13 opens with the same three birds, the eagle, the bearded vulture and the black vulture. The Targum, in John Gill's report, counts a bird that preys on others as unclean. These three head the unclean birds Israel may not eat.

Adam Clarke separates two Hebrew names here, daah at Leviticus 11:14 and daiyah in this verse, and takes them for different birds. He holds that daah means a kite or glede, and that the King James was wrong to render it vulture. The Berean reads kite in both places.

The words any kind of widen one name to a whole family of birds, and they return with the hawk and the heron. John Gill reports the remark of Maimonides that only the unclean birds are numbered, so these family names carry the count further than the list looks. Ravens fed Elijah at 1 Kings 17:6.

Leviticus 11:16 names the ostrich, the screech owl, the gull and the hawk in the same order. Albert Barnes explains the small differences between the two lists of unclean birds by the time and circumstances of the speaker. Lamentations 4:3 calls a cruel people like an ostrich in the wilderness.

Three owls stand in this verse, the little, the great and the white, of the five owls on the list. Isaiah 34:11 and Zephaniah 2:14 set the desert owl and the screech owl in ruined places. Clement of Alexandria held that such laws hid their spiritual reasons.

The cormorant stands between the little owl and the great owl at Leviticus 11:17, and here it closes the verse after the osprey. Clement of Alexandria read lists like this as frugality made a matter of law, leaving few things fit to eat. Only the order has moved.

Leviticus 11:19 closes with the same four, the bat last. Jeremiah 8:7 praises the stork for knowing her appointed seasons, and sets it against a people who do not know what the LORD requires. The Targum of Jonathan, as John Gill reports it, describes the insects of verse 19 as creatures that fly as birds.

Leviticus 11:20 gives the rule for flying insects that walk on all fours, and here it follows the birds. The Targum, in John Gill's report, names flies and wasps. It counts them unclean, and they may not be eaten.

The permission to eat any clean bird returns here after the list of unclean birds and flying insects, closing what verse 11 opened. John Gill reports that the Targum counts the clean locust of Leviticus 11:22 among the clean flying things. John the Baptist ate locusts at Mark 1:6.

One verse carries three rules and ties them to the reason that Israel is a holy people. A carcass may go to a foreigner, while Leviticus 17:15 puts uncleanness on native and foreigner alike, and both accounts stand. The ban on cooking “a young goat in its mother’s milk” comes a third time, after Exodus 23:19 and 34:26, and Clarke passes on Calmet's reading that it concerns the offering.

Deuteronomy 14:22-27

Numbers 18:21 gave the tithe to the Levites, and the tithe here is eaten by the man who brings it at the chosen place. The older Jewish reckoning, which Josephus and Clarke follow, counts a second tithe, while others read one tithe seen from another angle. The meal's stated reason is “so that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always”, which makes the feast itself the lesson.

Grain, new wine and oil are the three crops named with the tithe at 12:17, which forbids eating it within your gates. Adam Clarke places this meal at the sanctuary in the first and second years of every three. Verse 28 gives the third year its own rule.

The same allowance for distance stands at 12:21, where a man too far from the place may slaughter at home. Here the distance turns the tenth into money, and the man still goes to the place the LORD will choose. John Gill calls money the lighter and easier carriage.

The money is carried in the hand to the place the LORD will choose. John Gill reports a reading that it was tied up to keep it apart from other money, and he takes it as a purse for the road. Leviticus 27:31 adds a fifth when a man redeems his tenth.

Strong drink is allowed at this feast and forbidden to the priests on duty at Leviticus 10:9, and Adam Clarke sends the reader there for its meaning. Clarke reads the verse as provision for the comfort and happiness of the people. The household rejoices together.

John Gill, following Jarchi, reads this as a second duty to the Levite: he had his first tithe already, and he was to be taken to the feast as well. Deuteronomy 12:19 gives the same charge. Nehemiah 13:10-11 finds the Levites gone back to their fields when their portions were withheld.

Deuteronomy 14:28-29

Every third year the tithe is laid up “within your gates”, and 26:12 calls that year the year of the tithe. The Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow come and eat, as they do together at 16:11, 16:14 and 26:12-13. So the man who serves the sanctuary eats from the provision that feeds the widow, and James 1:27 keeps the widow at the centre of religion.

eat and be satisfied: Albert Barnes counts the three years from the sabbatical year, which puts this tithe for the poor in the third and sixth years of every seven. The promise that the LORD will bless the work of your hands returns at 24:19 over the sheaf left for the foreigner and the widow. The giver is the one blessed.