Leviticuschapter 11
47 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination.
Introduction
Moses, by tradition, The Law, Leviticus Overview.
Moses received this law at Sinai for a people who had just watched the priesthood installed and two of its first priests die. It opens the part of Leviticus that teaches Israel to tell the clean from the unclean, and it begins at the most ordinary place, the family table. The first hearers were herders and cooks who would meet these rules every day of their lives. Listen for the kinds of creatures the law sorts and for how it sorts each kind. Notice where the chapter keeps its one stated reason, and read the whole list in the light of it.
Context
- Who
- Freed slaves who had eaten what Egypt ate for four hundred years and were being sent toward a land whose inhabitants ate differently again
- What
- A law sorting the animals Israel may eat from those it may not, and teaching how contact with a carcass makes a person unclean.
- Where
- The camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, and every household table in it.
- When
- The second year after the Exodus, about 1445 BC on the traditional dating.
- Why
- To make holiness a matter of every meal, because the LORD who brought Israel out of Egypt is holy.
Historical context
The speech is addressed to Moses and to Aaron together, which the previous chapter explains: Leviticus 10:10 and 10:11 had just made the priest the man who distinguishes clean from unclean and teaches the distinction to Israel.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The setting is the ordinary meal rather than the sanctuary. Nothing in the chapter requires a priest to act, and nothing in it is performed at an altar, so this is law that worked in tents and kitchens.
Every nation in this world had food customs, and most of them were tied to particular temples or castes. What is unusual here is that the rules are read out to the whole nation at once, so an ordinary herdsman knew the list as well as a priest did.
A first hearer knew what the four animals of verses 4 to 7 were and why naming them settled the question. The camel, the rock badger, the rabbit and the pig were the familiar near misses, each carrying one of the two signs, and a rule argued from its hardest cases is a rule that needs no further examples.
He also knew the difference between a clay pot and a wooden bowl in a way a modern reader has to be told. Fired clay is porous and cannot be scoured clean, which is why verse 33 breaks it while a wooden vessel is washed, and the same split runs at 6:28 and 15:12.
The gathering of water at verse 36 was a practical exemption: a spring or a cistern was a household's whole water supply, and a rule that defiled it with one dead lizard would have been unliveable.
Significance
Three times a day the nation was reminded that it belonged to someone. That was the point verses 44 and 45 make, and it is the only reason the chapter gives.
Show the rest of the significance, 2 more paragraphs
The list also did work at the boundary. A people who could not share a table with its neighbours stayed a people, and the practical effect of that was felt long before anyone wrote it down as a theory.
For a household the rules were manageable rather than crushing. Most of the second half of the chapter ends a defilement with water and the fall of evening, without a priest, without a sacrifice and without a fine.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
This is the chapter of the Jewish table, and its law is kept today. This site records that in the Kept today card of its reader, where the separation of meat from milk in Orthodox practice stands beside the narrower Karaite reading of the same verse (src/components/reader/PracticesCard.tsx). What the classical tradition works out from this chapter is the shape of that keeping. The ban is on eating, and the tradition holds that other uses of a forbidden creature are permitted (Rashi on Leviticus 11:13:1). Rashi is quoted from the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, which the corpus marks public domain. The wording of the ban on birds is read as making an adult liable for feeding them to a child, where the child is not liable (Rashi on Leviticus 11:13:1). Food mixed with one of the swarming creatures is forbidden where the creature gives it its taste (Rashi on Leviticus 11:11:1). A fish counts as permitted where it had fins and scales in the water, even where it sheds them when landed (Rashi on Leviticus 11:12:1). Carrying a carcass is treated more strictly than touching one, because the carrier must wash the clothes he wore (Rashi on Leviticus 11:25:1).
How it is read
This site already carries the question of what the dietary laws were for, with its holders, in the book's dossier at src/components/book/dossier-content/leviticus.ts, and the question is left there rather than argued again here. The corpus adds how the classical commentators worked with the list itself. Rashi reads the opening plural as an honour paid to Moses, Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar together, because all four accepted the death of Nadab and Abihu in silence (Rashi on Leviticus 11:2:1). He takes the word for the divided hoof from the Targum as split (Rashi on Leviticus 11:3:1). He argues from the animals named to the ones left out. If a creature carrying one sign of cleanness is forbidden, an animal carrying none is forbidden all the more (Rashi on Leviticus 11:8:1).
The identification of the birds is where Rashi works hardest, and he uses the French of his own day to do it. He gives one as the sparrow hawk (Rashi on Leviticus 11:16:1). He gives another as the bat, and separates it from the eyeless creature of the same name among the creeping things, which he takes for the mole (Rashi on Leviticus 11:18:1). He carries from Chullin 63a the reading of another bird as the one that draws fish out of the sea, which is how Onkelos renders it (Rashi on Leviticus 11:17:1). The stork is explained from its name. It is called the kind one because it deals kindly with its fellows over food (Rashi on Leviticus 11:19:1). Where the list says after its kind, Rashi notes that one species may hold birds of different colours and different names (Rashi on Leviticus 11:13:1).
Ramban is quoted here from the Commentary on the Torah translated and annotated by Charles B. Chavel, New York, 1971 to 1976, which the corpus marks CC-BY. He uses the hare of the sixth verse to set out how Hebrew names animals. Some names cover male and female alike, and some species have no separate name for the female at all. He gives the ostrich and the pigeon as names that serve both. He gives the camel, the rock badger and the swine as masculine names that cover the female (Ramban on Leviticus 11:6:1).
The rest is exact. The swarming creatures are the small things that move along the ground, and among the flying ones Rashi names flies, hornets, gnats and grasshoppers (Rashi on Leviticus 11:10:1 and 11:20:1). The repetition in the twenty third verse teaches that a creature with five feet is clean (Rashi on Leviticus 11:23:1). The camel is given as the animal whose hoof is split above and joined below (Rashi on Leviticus 11:26:1).
Ibn Ezra stands on the fourteenth, fifteenth and twenty second verses (Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 11:14:1, 11:15:1 and 11:22:1). The corpus keeps no text of him, because the licence Sefaria reports does not permit it. Malbim stands on the fourth, and Sefaria holds no English version of it (Malbim on Leviticus, Shmini 70:1).
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty Midrash and Talmud locators on this chapter and the text of none of them. Each is cited here rather than quoted, and what each teaches is reported as the teaching of the rabbis.
Thirty one of them are Talmudic, and Chullin, the tractate on permitted and forbidden food, carries fifteen. Four stand together on the birds, at 63a:3, 63a:7, 63a:15 and 63a:16. Three stand at 59a:8 on the animals, 67b:12 on the water creatures and 60b:16 on the birds, and one on the locusts, at 65b:2. Seven stand on the carcass and what it touches, at 118a:1, 124b:10, 112b:6, 125a:2, 84a:12, 117b:11 and 127a:13. Bekhorot carries six, at 6b:19, 6b:20, 6b:7, 16a:10, 7b:7 and 9b:23. Avodah Zarah carries three, at 68b:15, 34a:1 and 39b:12. Bava Kamma carries three, at 64b:8, 38a:8 and 2a:10, with a further entry in the Jerusalem Talmud at Bava Kamma 7:7:4. Avot DeRabbi Natan stands at 34:5 and, in Recension B, at 27:17. Bava Batra 9b:3 closes the Talmudic list.
Nine midrashic locators run beside them. Bamidbar Rabbah stands twice, at 15:4 and 19:2. Bereshit Rabbah stands twice, at 32:3 on the swine and at 65:3. Ein Yaakov stands twice, at Megillah 1:7 in the Glick Edition and at Rosh Hashanah 1:13. The last three are Kohelet Rabbah 4:9:1, Midrash Lekach Tov, Leviticus 11:12:1, and Sifra, Shemini, Chapter 6 6.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Leviticus 11:1:1 to 11:26:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain; Ramban, Ramban on Leviticus 11:6:1, the Commentary on the Torah translated and annotated by Charles B. Chavel, New York, 1971 to 1976, CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 11:14:1, 11:15:1 and 11:22:1, cited by ref because the licence Sefaria reports does not permit the text; Malbim, Malbim on Leviticus, Shmini 70:1, cited by ref because Sefaria holds no English version; MannaFest, the Kept today card, src/components/reader/PracticesCard.tsx, and the book dossier, src/components/book/dossier-content/leviticus.ts, which carries the question of the dietary laws with its holders; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/leviticus/11.json, the 40 Midrash and Talmud locators of this chapter.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Split hoof and chewed cud
Leviticus 11:1-8
The speech includes Aaron, since Leviticus 10:10 had made the priest the one who must distinguish between the clean and the unclean. Land animals are settled by a test, a split hoof and a chewed cud together, and the four creatures of verses 4 to 7 are the near misses, each with one sign. Verse 8 forbids touching their carcasses, and the chapter turns from diet to contact.
Leviticus 11:1
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron,.... The one being the chief magistrate, and the other the high priest, and both concerned to see the following laws put into execution; according to Jarchi, the Lord spoke to Moses that he might speak to Aaron; but being now in office, and one part of his office being to distinguish between clean and unclean, the following discourse is directed equally to him as to Moses: saying unto them; as follows.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Leviticus 11:1
“Yahweh speaks to Moses and Aaron conjointly. (Compare Lev 13:1; Lev 15:1.) The high priest, in regard to the legal purifications, is treated as co-ordinate with the legislator.”
Albert Barnes takes beasts here to mean the larger land animals, set apart from the birds and creeping things treated later. John Wesley notes that a line between clean and unclean animals already stood before the flood, at Genesis 7:2. John Gill, citing the rabbi Jarchi, limits these laws to Israel.
Leviticus 11:2
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying,.... For to them only belong the following laws, and not unto the Gentiles, as Jarchi rightly observes; these were parts of the ceremonial law, which was peculiarly given to them, and lay, among other things, in meats and drinks, and now abolished; for it is not what goes into a man that defiles him; nor is anything common or unclean of itself, but every creature of God is good if received with thanksgiving.”
3 more voices on this verse
Leviticus 11:2
“Rather, “These are the animals which ye may eat out of all the beasts;” that is, out of the larger creatures, the quadrupeds, as distinguished from birds and reptiles. See Gen 1:24. Of quadrupeds, those only might be eaten which completely divided the hoof and chew the cud Lev 11:3-8.”
Leviticus 11:2
“These are the beasts - Though every creature of God be good and pure in itself, yet it pleased God to make a difference between clean and unclean, which he did in part before the flood, Gen. vii, 2, but more fully here for many reasons; as, 1.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 11:2
“THE MOSAIC LAW ATTACHED great importance to meats and drinks: the Christian religion attaches none. The apostle Peter was shown by the vision of a sheet let down from heaven, not only that all nations were now to receive the gospel message, but that all kinds of food were now clean, and that all the prohibitions which had formerly been laid upon them for legal purposes were now once for all withdrawn. A Christian may, if he pleases, put himself under restrictions as to these matters.”
Adam Clarke describes the hoof meant as the ox's, split into two toes with each toe cased in horn. The word completely matters for the camel in verse 4. Clement of Alexandria read the two signs as justice and meditation on the word, and John Wesley saw a training in self-denial.
Leviticus 11:3
“Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed - These two words mean the same thing - a divided hoof, such as that of the ox, where the hoof is divided into two toes, and each toe is cased with horn. Cheweth the cud - Ruminates; casts up the grass, etc., which had been taken into the stomach for the purpose of mastication. Animals which chew the cud, or ruminate, are provided with two, three or four stomachs.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The camel's foot is split at the top and joined below in a soft pad, as Albert Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe it. The division is incomplete, and that is enough to exclude it. John Wesley notes that it was common food in Arabia.
Leviticus 11:4
“Divideth not the hoof - The toes of the camel are divided above, but they are united below in a sort of cushion or pad resting upon the hard bottom of the foot, which is “like the sole of a shoe.” The Moslems eat the flesh of the camel, but it is said not to be wholesome.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:4
“And cheweth the cud - Hebrew. and bringeth up the cud, that is, the meat once chewed, out of the stomach in the mouth again, that it may be chewed a second time for better concoction. And this branch is to be joined with the former, both properties being necessary for the allowed beasts.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The Hebrew shaphan is usually identified with the hyrax, a small animal of rocky places that Albert Barnes names Hyrax Syriacus. Barnes adds that Cuvier found it related in anatomy to the rhinoceros, though it might easily be taken for a rodent. Adam Clarke gives its local names, daman Israel and ashkoko.
Leviticus 11:5
“The coney - The Old English name for a rabbit. The animal meant is the Hyrax Syriacus. It bears some resemblance to the guinea-pig or the marmot, and in its general appearance and habits Pro 30:26; Psa 104:18, it might easily be taken for a rodent. But Cuvier discovered that it is, in its anatomy, a true pachyderm, allied to the rhinoceros and the tapir, inferior to them as it is in size.”
Adam Clarke takes the Hebrew arnebeth as the hare. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say hares only appear to chew the cud, from the constant working of their jaws on the grasses they eat. On that reading the verse describes the animal as it appears to an observer.
Leviticus 11:6
“The hare - ארנבת arnebeth, as Bochart and others suppose, from ארה arah, to crop, and ניב nib, the produce of the ground, these animals being remarkable for destroying the fruits of the earth. That they are notorious for destroying the tender blade of the young corn, is well known. It is very likely that different species of these animals are included under the general terms שפן shaphan, and ארנבת arnebeth, for some travelers have observed that there are four or five sorts of these animals, which are used for food in the present day in those countries.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:6
“They only appear to be so from working the jaws on the grasses they live on. They are not cloven-footed; and besides, it is said that from the great quantity of down upon them, they are very much subject to vermin--that in order to expel these, they eat poisonous plants, and if used as food while in that state, they are most deleterious [WHITLAW].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The pig has the divided hoof and fails on the cud. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown give a reason from health, linking its meat to skin disease in hot climates. Adam Clarke adds its place in pagan worship, and Clement of Alexandria read it as a figure of greed and lust.
Leviticus 11:7
“He divide the hoof ... - It is cloven-footed and completely, etc. See Lev 11:3 note. Of all the quadrupeds of which the Law forbids the flesh to be eaten, the pig seems to have been regarded as the most unclean. Compare the marginal references. Several other nations have agreed with the Hebrews in this respect: the reason being that its flesh is unwholesome, especially in warm climates.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:7
“The all-wise Educator, by the lips of Moses, compared association with corrupt men to living with swine when he forbade the ancient people to partake of swine. He made it plain in those words that they who invoke God should not seek the company of the unclean who, like swine, revel in bodily pleasures and filthy habits of life and impure delights, itching for evil-minded pleasures of sex.”
Clement of Alexandria · written before 215 · The Instructor Book 3patristic
The ban on touching is limited to carcasses. John Wesley argues that the fat and hides of these animals still had lawful uses, for medicine and other purposes. He compares the ban on images at Exodus 20:4, which he reads as aimed at their worship.
Leviticus 11:8
“But since the fat and skins of some of the forbidden creatures were useful, for medicinal and other good purposes, and were used by good men, it is not probable that God would have them cast away. Thus God forbad the making of images, Exod. xx, 4, not universally, but in order to the worshipping them, as Christian interpreters agree.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Fins and scales in the water
Leviticus 11:9-12
Water creatures get the shortest rule in the chapter and no names at all, only fins and scales. The wording also changes here. Land beasts were called unclean, while the creatures of the water are called an abomination, four times in three verses. The chapter makes that difference in grade and gives no ground for it.
Leviticus 11:9
“Any fish, either from salt water or fresh, might be eaten if it had both scales and fins. but no other creature that lives in the waters. Shellfish of all kinds, whether mollusks or crustaceans, and cetaceous animals, were therefore prohibited, as well as fish which appear to have no scales, like the eel; probably because they were considered unwholesome, and (under certain circumstances) found to be so.”
Matthew Henry notes that the ancients counted fish the finest food, and so God laid little restraint on it. He allowed for delight. Gregory the Dialogist read the fins as the virtues that let elect souls leap above the water.
Leviticus 11:10
“Hence again, fish that do not have fins are forbidden from being eaten by the faithful people. For fish that have scale-fins are also accustomed to leap above the waters. What therefore is figured by finned fish except elect souls? These alone indeed pass into the body of the heavenly Church, who, supported by the fins of virtues, know how to leap through heavenly desire, so that they may reach toward things above through contemplation, although they fall back again into themselves from mortal flesh.”
Gregory the Dialogist · written before 604 · Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 31patristic
John Wesley draws weight from the words to you in verses 10 to 12. They are detestable to Israel alone. He concludes that when the partition wall between Jews and Gentiles was taken away, these distinctions of food were to cease.
Leviticus 11:11
“They shall be even an abomination to you,.... This is repeated again and again, to deter from the eating of such fishes, lest there should be any desire after them: ye shall not eat of their flesh, here mention is made of the flesh of fishes, as is by the apostle, 1Co 15:39. Aben Ezra observes, that their wise men say, this is according to the usage of words in those ages: but you shall have their carcasses in abomination; not only abstain from eating them and touching them, but to express the utmost aversion to them.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:11
“Unto you - This clause is added to shew that they were neither abominable in their own nature, nor for the food of other nations; and consequently when the partition-wall between Jews and Gentiles was taken away, these distinctions of meat were to cease.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The verse restates the rule of verse 10 in one line. Both marks are required, fins and scales together. Matthew Henry reads the restraint forward to Christians, who are called by the gospel to self-denial and bearing the cross.
Birds that are not to be eaten
Leviticus 11:13-23
For birds the chapter drops the test and gives a bare list with no criterion, and several names are argued over in translation, the older lapwing now read as the hoopoe. The Hebrew word covers winged creatures, which is why the bat closes the list. Verses 21 and 22 permit locusts out of a detestable class, and Mark 1:6 gives John locusts and wild honey.
Leviticus 11:13
“As far as they can be identified, the birds here mentioned are such as live upon animal food. They were those which the Israelites might have been tempted to eat, either from their being easy to obtain, or from the example of other nations, and which served as types of the entire range of prohibited kinds. Lev 11:13 The eagle - Rather, the great vulture, which the Egyptians are known to have ranked as the first among birds.”
2 more voices on this verse
Leviticus 11:13
“Among the fowls - The true signification of the following Hebrew words is now lost, as the Jews at this day confess; which not falling out without God's singular providence may intimate the cessation of this law, the exact observation whereof since Christ came is become impossible.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 11:13
“He adds too that they are not to eat "kite or mastophage or eagle," meaning "You shall not go near those who make their livelihood by plundering others." He says other similar things under some sort of allegory.”
Clement of Alexandria · written before 215 · The Instructor Book 3patristic
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that kites and vultures feed together on carrion, and they infer that birds living on plants were allowed. Any kind of widens the ban to each bird's whole family. Clement of Alexandria read the birds of prey as men who live by plundering others.
Leviticus 11:14
“In Egypt and perhaps in the adjoining countries also, the kite and vulture are often seen together flying in company, or busily pursuing their foul but important office of devouring the carrion and relics of putrefying flesh, which might otherwise pollute the atmosphere. after his kind--that is, the prohibition against eating it extended to the whole species.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:14
“The vulture - דאה daah, from the root to fly, and therefore more probably the kite or glede, from its remarkable property of gliding or sailing with expanded wings through the air. The דאה daah is a different bird from the דיה daiyah, which signifies the vulture. See Bochart, vol. iii., col. 195. The kite - איה aiyah, thought by some to be the vulture, by others the merlin. Parkhurst thinks it has its name from the root אוה avah, to covet, because of its rapaciousness; some contend that the kite is meant.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Adam Clarke takes the Hebrew oreb as a general term covering the raven, crow, rook, jackdaw and magpie. John Gill notes that the raven was sacred to Apollo among the pagans. He also calls it a greedy bird.
Leviticus 11:15
“Every raven after his kind. The red raven, night raven, the water raven, river raven, wood raven, &c. this also includes crows, rooks, pies, jays, and jackdaws, &c. The raven was with the Heathens sacred to Apollo (o), is a voracious creature, and so reckoned among unclean ones, and unfit for food; nor does the care that God takes of these creatures, or the use he has made of them, contradict this; see Job 38:41. (o) Aelian. De Animal. l. 1. c. 48. & l. 7. c. 18.”
The Hebrew behind ostrich is bath haiyaanah, which Adam Clarke renders the daughter of vociferation. He cites Dr Shaw on their mournful cries at night. Older versions read owl here, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown also take the word as the ostrich.
Adam Clarke notes that the Hebrew cos also means a cup, and some took it for the pelican because of the pouch under its jaw. For the great owl, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown mention the view that the ibis of Egypt is meant. The names remain uncertain.
The Septuagint read the Hebrew tinshemeth as the porphyrion, a purple bird, and Adam Clarke thought a flamingo might be meant. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the last name in the verse, racham, means tenderness, which led some to the kingfisher. Each name has several candidates.
Leviticus 11:18
“The swan - תנשמת tinshemeth. The Septuagint translate the word by πορφυριωνα, the porphyrion, purple or scarlet bird. Could we depend on this translation, we might suppose the flamingo or some such bird to be intended. Some suppose the goose to be meant, but this is by no means likely, as it cannot be classed either among ravenous or unclean fowls. Bochart thinks the owl is meant. The pelican - קאת kaath.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:18
“It is solitary in its habits and, like other large aquatic birds, often flies to a great distance from its favorite haunts. the gier eagle--Being here associated with waterfowl, it has been questioned whether any species of eagle is referred to. Some think, as the original name racham denotes "tenderness," "affection," the halcyon or kingfisher is intended [CALMET].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The Hebrew for stork, chasidah, comes from the word for kindness, as Adam Clarke explains, from the care the bird was said to show its young and its aged parents. John Gill calls it a bird of passage, citing Jeremiah 8:7.
Leviticus 11:19
“The stork - חסידה chasidah, from חסד chasad, which signifies to be abundant in kindness, or exuberant in acts of beneficence; hence applied to the stork, because of its affection to its young, and its kindness in tending and feeding its parents when old; facts attested by the best informed and most judicious of the Greek and Latin natural historians. See Bochart, Scheuchzer, and Parkhurst, under the word חסד chasad. It is remarkable for destroying and eating serpents, and on this account might be reckoned by Moses among unclean birds. The heron - אנפה anaphah.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Winged crawlers and leaping locusts
Many of these creatures have more than four legs. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and John Wesley take the phrase as walking on the ground, whatever the count of feet. Albert Barnes notes that the Hebrew word for these creatures comes from a verb meaning to teem.
Leviticus 11:20
“All fowls that creep,.... Or rather "every creeping thing that flies"; for what are designed are not properly fowls, but, as the Jewish writers interpret them, flies, fleas, bees, wasps, hornets, locusts, &c. so the Targum of Jonathan, Jarchi, Ben Gersom, and Maimonides (y): going upon all four; that is, upon their four feet, when they walk or creep: these shall be an abomination to you; not used as food, but detested as such. (y) Maacolot Asurot, c. 2. l. 5.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:20
“All fowls that creep, &c.--By "fowls" here are to be understood all creatures with wings and "going upon all fours," not a restriction to animals which have exactly four feet, because many "creeping things" have more than that number. The prohibition is regarded generally as extending to insects, reptiles, and worms.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The mark of the permitted insects is the long jointed hind leg used for leaping. Adam Clarke describes those legs rising above the back of the locust and grasshopper. Albert Barnes groups them with the cricket among leaping insects.
Leviticus 11:21
“Legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth - The families of the Saltatoria, of which the common cricket, the common grasshopper, and the migratory locust, may be taken as types.”
Albert Barnes admits that the four names cannot be identified with certainty, and he mentions the view that some are stages in a locust's growth. John Wesley notes that locusts were eaten by the Ethiopians, Libyans and Parthians. The English names are best guesses.
Leviticus 11:22
“The locust - ארבה arbeh, either from ארב arab, to lie in wait or in ambush, because often immense flights of them suddenly alight upon the fields, vineyards, etc., and destroy all the produce of the earth; or from רבה rabah, he multiplied, because of their prodigious swarms. See a particular account of these insects in the notes on Exo 10:4 (note). The bald locust - סלעם solam, compounded, says Mr. Parkhurst, from סלע sala, to cut, break, and עם am, contiguity; a kind of locust, probably so called from its rugged, craggy form.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:22
“The locust - Locusts, though unusual in our food, were commonly eaten by the Ethiopians, Lybians, Parthians, and other eastern people bordering upon the Jews. And as it is certain the eastern locusts were much larger than ours, so it is probable they were of different qualities, and yielding better nourishment.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The verse closes the exception by repeating the rule of verse 20 in nearly the same words. Only the leaping kinds of verse 21 are released from it. Every other winged creeping thing stays detestable.
Touching a carcass makes you unclean
Leviticus 11:24-28
From here the subject is touching, and what follows is a state that passes: he will be unclean until evening and must wash his clothes, with no sacrifice. Leviticus 5:2 takes up the man who touches a carcass unaware, and there guilt and an offering follow. Adam Clarke reads the animals that walk on their paws as those whose feet work like hands.
Leviticus 11:24
“Unclean - If the due purification was omitted at the time, through negligence or forgetfulness, a sin-offering was required. See Lev 5:2.”
Carrying a carcass costs more than touching one, since verse 24 sets evening alone for touch and this verse adds the washing of clothes. Matthew Henry reads the evening limit as a sign that these pollutions would end with the death of Christ. He also draws a lesson of nightly repentance.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown apply this verse to animals with a single hoof, such as horses and donkeys. They add animals whose feet divide into paws, such as lions. Verse 27 then names the pawed animals directly.
John Wesley notes that the Hebrew says upon his hands, meaning feet divided like fingers, as in dogs, cats, apes and bears. The hoof test has no place for such feet.
Leviticus 11:27
“Whatsoever goeth upon his paws - כפיו cappaiv, his palms or hands, probably referring to those animals whose feet resemble the hands and feet of the human being, such as apes, monkeys, and all creatures of that genus; together with bears, frogs, etc.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
John Gill ties this rule to verse 25, where the same terms covered winged creeping things. He notes that it bound every Israelite alike, men, women and children. The closing words again tie the status to Israel.
Leviticus 11:28
“And he that beareth the carcass of them,.... Carries it upon any account, from place to place: shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even; as he that bore the carcasses of any of the flying creeping things, Lev 11:25. they are unclean to you; even the carcasses of the one and of the other; and to all the Israelites, men, women, and children, as Aben Ezra observes.”
Leviticus 11:29-35
Eight small creatures are named, and the rule moves from the animal to whatever it falls on when dead. An article of wood, clothing, leather or sackcloth is rinsed with water and is clean at evening, while a clay pot is broken and an oven is smashed. A thing fired from clay is destroyed where a thing of wood is washed, and the chapter leaves that difference unexplained.
Leviticus 11:29
The identification of “the creeping things” here named is not always certain. They are most likely those which were occasionally eaten. For the “Tortoise” read “the great lizard,” for the “ferret” the “gecko” (one of the lizard tribe), for the “chameleon” read the “frog” or the Nile lizard: by the word rendered “snail” is probably meant another kind of lizard, and by the “mole” the “chameleon.”
the chameleon: The five names here are all taken now as lizards, where older versions read ferret, snail and mole. Adam Clarke read anakah, the first, as a groaning lizard. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown likewise read the snail and the mole as kinds of lizard.
These small creatures lived inside houses and stores, which is why their dead bodies get such detailed rules. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe reptiles and mice lurking in boxes, vessels and holes in the walls of Eastern homes. A dead one could be touched by accident.
Leviticus 11:31
“This is a matter of essential importance in the East, where venomous reptiles often creep into houses and are found lurking in boxes, vessels, or holes in the wall; and the carcass of one of them, or a dead mouse, mole, lizard, or other unclean animal, might be inadvertently touched by the hand, or fall on clothes, skin bottles, or any article of common domestic use.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Adam Clarke fills the list from an Arab tent. He names wooden bowls, trunks and baskets covered with skins, goatskins used for churning milk, and hair sacks for carrying goods. Each of these could be washed, so each could be made clean by evening.
Leviticus 11:32
“Any vessel of wood - Such as the wooden bowls still in use among the Arabs. Or raiment, or skin - any trunks or baskets covered with skins, another part of the furniture of an Arab tent; the goat-skins, in which they churn their milk, may be also intended. Or sack - any hair-cloth used for the purpose of transporting goods from place to place.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Adam Clarke takes the clay pot as the common pitcher used for drinking and for holding liquids. Matthew Henry reads it as holiness reaching into the kitchen. He sets it beside Zechariah 14, where every pot in Jerusalem and Judah is called holy.
Leviticus 11:33
“And every earthen vessel - Such pitchers as are commonly used for drinking out of, and for holding liquids. M. De la Roque observes that hair-sacks, trunks, and baskets, covered with skin, are used among the travelling Arabs to carry their household utensils in, which are kettles or pots, great wooden bowls, hand-mills, and pitchers. It is very likely that these are nearly the same with those used by the Israelites in their journeyings in the wilderness, for the customs of these people do not change.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:33
“This taught them carefully to avoid every thing that was polluting, even in their common actions. Not only the vessels of the sanctuary, but every pot in Jerusalem and Judah, must be holiness to the Lord, Zech. xiv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Water is the carrier here. John Wesley explains that food cooked in water from a defiled pot becomes unclean, while dry food such as bread or fruit stays clean. He reasons that water takes up the defilement more readily and passes it on.
Leviticus 11:34
“That on which such water cometh - That flesh or herbs or other food which is dressed in water, in a vessel so polluted, shall be unclean; not so, if it be food which is eaten dry, as bread, or fruits; the reason of which difference seems to be this, that the water did sooner receive the pollution in itself, and convey it to the food so dressed.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The Hebrew behind cooking pot has puzzled readers. Albert Barnes mentions two guesses, a fireplace dug to hold a pair of ovens or a support like a pair of andirons. Adam Clarke describes the Arab hearth, a hole in the tent floor lined with stones.
Leviticus 11:36-38
Two exemptions run against the rule just given. A spring or a cistern holding a body of water stays clean when a carcase touches it, and dry seed kept for sowing stays clean, while the same seed defiles once water has been put on it. The Hebrew phrase behind plenty of water is mikveh mayim, a gathering of water, and the Mishnah tractate Mikvaot, compiled around 200 AD, takes its name and its law of immersion pools from this verse.
Leviticus 11:36
“A fountain or pit, etc. - This must either refer to running water, the stream of which soon carries off all impurities, or to large reservoirs where the water soon purifies itself; the water in either which touched the unclean thing, being considered as impure, the rest of the water being clean.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:36
“Of this no reason can be given, but the will of the law-giver and his merciful condescension to men's necessities, water being scarce in those countries; and for the same reason God would have the ceremonial law of sacrifices, give place to the law of mercy.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
John Wesley gives two reasons for the exemption. Seed was a necessary provision, and it went through many changes in the ground before anyone ate what it produced. Adam Clarke reads verses 37 and 38 together as a single rule about dry and wet seed.
Leviticus 11:37
“Any sowing seed - If any part of an impure carcass fall accidentally on seed about to be sown, it shall not on that account be deemed unclean; but if the water put to the seed to prepare it for being sown, shall be touched by such impure carcass, the seed shall be considered as unclean, Lev 11:38. Probably this may be the meaning of these passages.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Water again carries the uncleanness, as with food in verse 34. John Wesley adds that wet seed takes defilement sooner and holds it longer. Soaked seed also had to wait before sowing, he says, so the need that protected dry seed was absent.
Leviticus 11:38
“If any water - The reason of the difference is, because wet seed doth sooner receive, and longer retain any pollution and partly because such seed was not fit to be sown presently, and therefore that necessity which justified the use of the dry seed, could not be pretended in this case.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 11:39-43
An animal a man may eat still defiles the one who touches its carcass when it dies, so cleanness belongs to the living beast. From verse 41 every creature that moves along the ground is put out of the diet. Verse 42 names what crawls on its belly, recalling the serpent's sentence at Genesis 3:14, On your belly will you go.
Leviticus 11:39
“If any beast die - Either of itself, or being killed by some wild beast, in which cases the blood was not poured forth, as it was when they were killed by men either for food or sacrifice.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Eating a carcass carries the same light penalty as carrying one, washing and waiting until evening. John Wesley assumes the man ate it unknowingly. Eating it knowingly, he says, broke Deuteronomy 14:21 and brought the penalty of being cut off.
Leviticus 11:40
“He that eateth - Unwittingly, for if he did it knowingly, it was a presumptuous sin against an express law, Deut. xiv, 21, and therefore punished with cutting off.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Be holy, for I am holy
Matthew Henry connects this ban with the curse on the serpent, which was sentenced to go on its belly. He reads the law as keeping alive the enmity between the serpent and man set at Genesis 3:15. The verse turns from touching back to eating.
Albert Barnes sorts the verse into three groups, snakes and worms on the belly, small vermin on four feet, and spiders and many-legged creatures on more. Adam Clarke reports a scribal note on the word for belly. One letter in it is written large, and the note calls it the middle letter of the Law.
Leviticus 11:42
“Whatsoever goeth upon the belly - In the word גהון gahon, the vau holem, in most Hebrew Bibles, is much larger than the other letters; and a Masoretic note is added in the margin, which states that this is the middle letter of the law; and consequently this verse is the middle verse of the Pentateuch. Whatsoever hath more feet - Than four; that is, all many-footed reptiles, as well as those which go upon the belly having no feet, such as serpents; besides the four-footed smaller animals mentioned above.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
ConnectionsGenesis 3:14
The wording puts the defiling on the person himself. Matthew Henry applies the moral to Christians as a ban on sharing in the deeds of darkness. He adds from Isaiah 66 that an offering without holiness of life is worthless.
Leviticus 11:43
“And thus the moral of it is obligatory on us, forbidding us to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; and, without this real holiness of the heart and life, he that offereth an oblation is as if he offered swine's blood ( Isa. lxvi.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Leviticus 11:44-45
For I am the Lord your God: Here the chapter gives its one reason, and the reason is God: be holy, because I am holy, said twice, with the deliverance out of Egypt as the ground already laid. The line is quoted at 1 Peter 1:16 to a church keeping none of these food rules, taking up the reason and leaving the list. The command stands again at 19:2 and 20:26.
Leviticus 11:44
“Ye shall - sanctify yourselves - Ye shall keep yourselves separate from all the people of the earth, that ye may be holy; for I am holy. And this was the grand design of God in all these prohibitions and commands; for these external sanctifications were only the emblems of the internal purity which the holiness of God requires here, and without which none can dwell with him in glory hereafter. See at the conclusion of this chapter. The contents of this chapter must furnish many profitable reflections to a pious mind.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 11:44
“Thus these rudiments of the world were their tutors and governors ( Gal. iv. 2, 3 ), to bring them to that which is the revival of our first state in Adam and the earnest of our best state with Christ, that is, holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. This is indeed the great design of all the ordinances, that by them we may sanctify ourselves and learn to be holy.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Matthew Henry reads the exodus here as a reason for obedience. God had singled Israel out by his favors, so he could fairly single them out by his laws. He ties the holiness of God to his glory, citing Exodus 15:11.
Leviticus 11:45
“His holiness is his glory ( Exod. xv. 11 ), and therefore it becomes his house for ever, Ps. xciii. This great precept, thus enforced, though it comes in here in the midst of abrogated laws, is quoted and stamped for a gospel precept, 1 Pet. i.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Leviticus 11:46-47
The closing line names the purpose: You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean. The reasons offered for the lines run from health, argued by Maimonides, to separation from the nations and the order of creation, and Leviticus argues none. Mark 7:19 adds (Thus all foods are clean.), and at Acts 10:28 Peter says God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.
Leviticus 11:46
“This law was to them a statute for ever, that is, as long as that economy lasted; but under the gospel we find it expressly repealed by a voice from heaven to Peter ( Acts x. 15 ), as it had before been virtually set aside by the death of Christ, with the other ordinances that perished in the using: Touch not, taste not, handle not, Col. ii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown suggest the chapter gave divine sanction to customs already old. Matthew Henry holds that it bound while that order lasted. He dates its end to the death of Christ, citing Colossians 2.
How this psalm is built
The form: Ritual instruction in the form of a dietary and contact law, opening the section on the clean and the unclean, as Wenham classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The test and the four near misses | Land animals are settled by two signs held together, a divided hoof and a chewed cud. Verses 4 to 7 then name four creatures that carry one sign and lack the other, the camel, the rock badger, the rabbit and the pig, so the rule is argued from its hardest cases rather than from its easy ones.Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, 1864 to 1870, on Leviticus 11:1 to 8. | Leviticus 11:3, Leviticus 11:4, Leviticus 11:5, Leviticus 11:6, Leviticus 11:7 |
| The test dropped for the birds | Water creatures get a test in four verses, fins and scales, with no names at all. The birds get the reverse, twenty names in seven verses and no criterion, so a reader learns which are excluded without learning what excludes them. Verses 21 and 22 hold the one permission granted out of an excluded class, four kinds of locust with jointed legs above their feet.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1831, on Leviticus 11:13. | Leviticus 11:9, Leviticus 11:13, Leviticus 11:21, Leviticus 11:22 |
| The turn from eating to touching | Verse 8 forbids touching the carcass as well as eating the flesh, and from verse 24 the subject is contact rather than diet. What follows is a state and not a punishment: the man is unclean until evening, and where he carried the carcass he washes his clothes, so time and water end it without a priest and without a sacrifice. | Leviticus 11:8, Leviticus 11:24, Leviticus 11:25 |
| Be holy, because I am holy | The chapter withholds any reason for forty-three verses and then gives one, twice in two verses, and the reason is God. The same sentence stands again at 19:2 and at 20:26, so it carries the argument of the whole book and is not peculiar to the food laws.Andrew Bonar, A Commentary on Leviticus, 1846, on Leviticus 11:44 to 45. | Leviticus 11:44, Leviticus 11:45, Leviticus 19:2, Leviticus 20:26 |
The chapter is the first of five on the clean and the unclean, and its stated reason at verses 44 and 45 is the sentence the rest of Leviticus argues from. Chapter 12 takes the same logic to childbirth, chapters 13 and 14 to skin conditions and to houses, and chapter 15 to discharges, and none of those chapters repeats the reason given here.
11 more paragraphs on the patterns
Verse 42 marks out whatever crawls on its belly, which repeats the words spoken over the serpent at Genesis 3:14, and the chapter draws no line between the two places. Verse 45 sets the deliverance out of Egypt beside the command to be holy, so the ground of the law is a rescue that has already happened.
The historical value
The Hebrew phrase behind a spring or cistern holding a body of water at verse 36 is mikveh mayim, a gathering of water. The Mishnah tractate Mikvaot, compiled in the land of Israel around 200 AD, takes its name and its law of immersion pools from this verse, so a rule of two clauses became a body of Jewish practice that is kept today.
Several of the bird names in verses 13 to 19 are argued over in translation, and older English renderings of cuckow, swan and lapwing are read now as the gull, the water hen and the hoopoe. The Hebrew term covers winged creatures rather than a modern zoological class, which is why the bat closes the list at verse 19. Mark 1:6 has John the Baptist living on the locusts that verses 21 and 22 permit.
The New Testament's use
1 Peter 1:16 quotes verse 44 to a church that kept none of these food rules, which is the New Testament taking up the reason and leaving the list. Mark 7:19 closes an argument about what comes out of a man with the evangelist's own comment that Jesus declared all foods clean. Acts 10:9 to 16 gives Peter a vision of these same creatures, and Peter states at 10:28 what he took from it, that God had shown him he should call no man impure or unclean, so the vision is applied in the narrative to people rather than to food.
The debated point
Why the lines fall where they do is the chapter's standing question, and Leviticus argues none of the answers. This site's Leviticus dossier carries three positions with their holders. The first is hygiene and health, an older popular reading with roots as far back as Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed of around 1190, though the dossier records that Maimonides himself grounded the laws chiefly in discipline and restraint rather than in medicine alone. The second is symbolic instruction in holiness, the anthropological reading associated with Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger of 1966, who read clean animals as those conforming fully to their own kind and unclean animals as anomalous, a daily lesson in distinguishing holy from common. The third is a boundary marker, held by a number of Old Testament scholars who note the practical effect of restricting table fellowship with other nations.
The strongest objection to the health reading is that the chapter gives a different reason itself at verses 44 and 45 and gives no other. The strongest objection to the symbolic reading is that the birds are listed without any criterion at all, which leaves the symbol unstated where the chapter had the most room to state it. The strongest objection to the boundary reading is that it explains the effect of the law rather than its content, and would not predict which animals fall on which side.
Where to go deeper
The categories this chapter works in, and the New Testament's handling of them, belong to the owed page on the clean and the unclean. The office that verse 1 addresses is set out at the priest.
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1979, the partition this site's Leviticus dossier carries as proposed under his name, which runs the purity section from 11:1 to 15:33; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, 1864 to 1870, on Leviticus 11:46 to 47 and Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, around 1190, as this site's Leviticus dossier records his position.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Andrew Bonar, A Commentary on Leviticus; Clement of Alexandria; Gregory the Dialogist, Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 31; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.