14:1–2 As children of God, Israel must honor God as their Father (5:16). Parents are the means for children to receive life and its provisions. God is the creator of Israel, but he also cares for them and corrects them as a father (1:31; 8:5). Participating in pagan cultic ritual is a denial of holiness. Cutting oneself was a Canaanite practice of mourning, often accompanied by shaving the head and beard, tearing the clothes, and wearing sackcloth. It was intended as sympathetic magic to appease the gods or influence them to show favor. In one Ugaritic myth, the god Latipan mourns the death of Baal by scraping his skin, shaving his beard, and plowing his chest. This is similarly a sign of the Philistines’ mourning at impending judgment (Jer. 47:5). Likewise Moab’s citizens cut their hands and shaved their heads as signs of mourning (Jer. 48:37). The prohibition in Israel is based on the sacredness of life and respect of the human body. These are a gift of the holy, for God is their Father.

14:3–8 Clean animals include three types of domesticated bovids (Deut. 14:4) and seven types of undomesticated bovids of the deer family, or caprines (vv. 5). Four animals are examples of forbidden food, particularly the rabbit, rock badger, camel, and pig. The rabbit and rock badger are not ungulates or ruminants, but they do chew their food a long time and may appear to chew the cud. It is not possible to specifically identify all of the ancient designations with known animals.

The list of land animals in Leviticus is expanded to include insects, rodents, and reptiles. All grasshoppers, those insects that have four legs and leap, are acceptable for food (Lev. 11:20–21). A list of forbidden rodents and reptiles is provided (Lev. 11:29–30), whose impurity is even more consequential than that of land, sea, or sky creatures. The prohibitions include everything that moves on its belly (snakes) or other insects with any number of legs (Lev. 11:41–42); these creatures are regarded as repugnant and “detestable” (Hb. sheqets) for food and make the person unclean.

14:9–10 Water animals are only distinguished by a general rule in both Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

14:11–20 No general rule is provided for distinguishing between edible and forbidden birds. Those birds that are forbidden are listed, a list exclusive to predators and scavengers. Modern classifications place the bat among mammals because its young are born alive and are nursed by their mother. Ancient classification operated according to simpler anatomical criteria: bats have wings. All “winged insects [sherets]” refers to all manner of swarming bugs; these are forbidden as in Leviticus.

14:21 Hunters and farmers kill their own food. Exodus 22:31 stipulates that the remains of anything killed by an animal must be given to dogs. These might be clean animals, but the means of death has rendered them unfit for food. The reason given is that the people of Israel are to be holy, the status they received by making the covenant at Sinai (Ex. 19:6). Leviticus 17:15 stipulates that eating food prepared from an animal that has not been slaughtered renders the person unclean. There are two possibilities for such food. It may be given to sojourners, non-Israelite neighbors, because they were usually landless and poor, not part of the covenant. Or it may be sold to a foreigner, an individual present in order to conduct business. Ritual purity did not pertain in such cases because these people were not part of the covenant; they were not set apart as holy.

While animals are part of human food, there is always the recognition that animals carry the gift of life no less than humans do. Humans are not entitled to kill animals without reason. Rather, humans are permitted to use animals for food, always acknowledging that this is a gift of God in the present order. The prohibition against consuming blood is a confession of this concession and an acknowledgement that animal life itself does not belong to humans. The prohibition against certain kinds of food preparation falls in the same category. In Israel, meat would have been eaten at festivals. In Exodus the command not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk is part of the festival stipulations (Ex. 23:19; 34:26). The fall festival would be the time at which young goats born that previous spring might be eaten. Here the command is part of provisions for eating meat. Similar stipulations require the young of cattle to be left with their mother at least a week before being made a gift to God, and similar stipulations forbid the slaughtering of cattle on the same day as their young or capturing a bird with her young or her eggs (Lev. 22:27–28; Deut. 22:6–7). Meat boiled in sour milk is much tastier than when simply cooked in water. The prohibition is that this must not be the milk of its mother, recognizing that she is the bearer of this life. It is likely that a kid is mentioned because of the festival contexts of this prohibition elsewhere, but the same rule would pertain to the young of cattle or sheep.