Leviticus Chapters 11-15

“If it feels good, do it!” “If it tastes good, eat it!” “Follow your heart’s desires!” These expressions advise people to let their physical feelings, emotions and tastes dictate what they do, without any consideration of right or wrong or long-term consequences to themselves or others. Perhaps this was the philosophy of those the Israelites left behind back in Egypt and those living in Canaan where they are headed. But God told the Israelites, “I am holy, you be holy, too.”

In the following chapters there are many laws concerning holiness, the standard that God expected the Israelites to follow. Moses uses the term clean and unclean quite often. No, Moses isn’t talking about housekeeping standards or personal hygiene. By “clean” he means “acceptable” to God. Some things are acceptable, others unacceptable.

Moses begins with what we might call, The New Israelite Diet. Unlike diet books today, this new diet doesn’t promise that you’ll “Lose Twenty Pounds in Twenty Days” or cure you of any number of ailments.

God declared that some foods were now acceptable (as in “clean”), and some are unacceptable (as in “unclean”). This doesn’t necessarily mean that the acceptable food was healthier than the unacceptable foods, as some teach. But I would imagine that He wouldn’t restrict the healthier foods from the diet of his “Chosen people.” They may have been eliminated for some health reasons that we don’t understand even today, or they were nutritionally neutral, neither healthy nor unhealthy.

If God gave these rules to protect their health, why weren’t these laws given to those before Moses and repeated to the church? Didn’t God care about the health of those who lived from the time of Noah to Moses or to Christians? If public health was the motive for instituting these dietary laws, wouldn’t Moses had given the Israelites other, more important guidelines to protect their health, such as boiling water before drinking it? Why didn’t Moses tell the Israelites not to eat certain plants which were poisonous?

If public health wasn’t the primary reason for these laws, what was the reason? It was to instill in the minds of the Israelites, in all areas of their lives, that there is a difference between what is acceptable and unacceptable, holy, and unholy. These dietary laws protected the Israelites from spiritual contamination by making it more difficult for the Israelites to interact with the Canaanites. Whether it’s a social or a religious gathering, food was always involved.

Imagine if you were an Orthodox Jew who is diabetic and has Celiac disease. That would certainly limit your participation in many activities where food was being served. Other prohibitions in this book, such as not trimming the corners of their beards, cutting their bodies or getting a tattoo were prohibited because they were part of pagan worship. The primary goal of many of these rules was to promote holiness. These passages can’t be used today to prohibit body piercing, tattooing or shaving your beard. Though, there are other reasons why you might not want to get carried away with this practice. Good luck on your next job interview, fella.