Leviticus 11

Leviticus 11

Leviticus 11 is dealing with the subject of cleanness and uncleanness, specifically, with the subject of clean and unclean foods. The word "clean"has a lot of different meanings today depending upon the context in which it is used. For one thing, the expression clean and its counterpoint unclean is one of the prominent themes of Leviticus. Unclean and its cognates occurs 132 times in the Old Testament; over half of these are in Leviticus. So the sense of uncleanness is a predominate theme, and the word clean, along with its related terms, occurs 74 times in Leviticus, which is over one-third of the uses found in the Old Testament.

When we come to chapter 11, it is stated that cleanness and uncleanness has to do principally with food. It deals secondarily with cleanness or uncleanness that is the result of contact with a dead animal, but it seems the reason the dead animal is called unclean is because we couldn't eat it. Even a clean animal, a bull or a sheep, could not be eaten if it were not killed in a sacrificially prescribed way. So it has to do with food or that which is touched when dead.we find first the land creatures, the animals that roam about through the earth (vv. 1-8); then we find in verses 9-12 the water creatures, those that live under water or in the water, and finally we have the flying creatures.

First, there are the land animals. There are two basic stipulations which must be met before an animal that dwells on the land can be considered clean and therefore can be eaten by the Israelite. It must be split-hoofed, and it must be a cud-chewer. It cannot be just one of those; it must be both of those. So a non-cud chewing split-hoofer isn't good enough. It has to be both, and the text makes