Deuteronomy 14:3-21
The Lord's holy people must let His word govern even the table, receiving ordinary food within covenant boundaries that teach holiness, distinction, and life before Him.
3 You shall not eat any abominable thing.
4 These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,
5 the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the chamois.
6 Every animal that parts the hoof, and has the hoof split in two and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.
7 Nevertheless these you shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of those who have the hoof split: the camel, the hare, and the rabbit. Because they chew the cud but don’t part the hoof, they are unclean to you.
8 The pig, because it has a split hoof but doesn’t chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat their meat. You shall not touch their carcasses.
9 These you may eat of all that are in the waters: you may eat whatever has fins and scales.
10 You shall not eat whatever doesn’t have fins and scales. It is unclean to you.
11 Of all clean birds you may eat.
12 But these are they of which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey,
13 the red kite, the falcon, the kite after its kind,
14 every raven after its kind,
15 the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, the hawk after its kind,
16 the little owl, the great owl, the horned owl,
17 the pelican, the vulture, the cormorant,
18 the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.
19 All winged creeping things are unclean to you. They shall not be eaten.
20 Of all clean birds you may eat.
21 You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself. You may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
The LORD's holy people must let His word govern even the table, receiving ordinary food within covenant boundaries that teach holiness, distinction, and life before Him.
Moses gives Israel food-boundary instructions that flow from their identity as the LORD's holy people. By distinguishing clean and unclean land animals, water creatures, birds, winged insects, and carcasses, Israel's daily table is placed under covenant holiness; even eating becomes a visible confession that they belong to the LORD and must not live by the undifferentiated practices of the nations.
Moses addresses Israel before entry into Canaan, where daily table practice would mark them as the LORD's set-apart people among nations with different worship, death, and food customs. Deuteronomy repeats and adapts the clean/unclean food distinctions from Leviticus 11 for the covenant-renewal setting, tying them directly to Israel's holiness and treasured-possession identity stated in Deuteronomy 14:1-2.
Sons of the LORD: Clean Food, Holy People, and the Tithe That Teaches Covenant Economics
Because Israel is a holy people — sons of the LORD their God — the way they eat, mourn, and distribute their material increase must embody and rehearse that identity: the food distinctions mark the boundary between Israel and the nations, the tithe rehearses before the LORD that all increase belongs to him and produces the joy of communal abundance at the chosen place, and the third-year tithe extends that abundance to those with no share — the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.