Unclean

Unclean (usually some form of the verb טָמֵא, which is the technical term for ceremonial pollution; ἀκάθαρτος, impure; but occasionally עֶרוָה, quaked; קָדֵשׁ, consecrated; נַדָּה, filth; κοινός, commons). In this article we treat of food prohibited by the Mosaic law, reserving defilements of the person for the following article. See CLEAN.

The Jews were forbidden to eat things strangled, or dead of themselves, or through beasts or birds of prey; whatever beast did not both part the hoof and chew the cud; and certain other smaller animals rated as "creeping things" (שֶׁרֶוֹ); certain classes of birds mentioned in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 twenty or twenty-one in all; whatever in the waters had not both fins and scales; whatever winged insect had not besides four legs the two hind legs for leaping; besides things offered in sacrifice to idols; and all blood or whatever contained it (save perhaps the blood of fish, as would appear from that only of beast and bird being forbidden [Le 7:26]), and therefore flesh cut from the live animal; as also all fat, at any rate that disposed in masses among the intestines, and probably wherever discernible and separable among the flesh (Le 3:14-17; Le 7:23). The eating of blood was prohibited even to "the stranger that sojourneth among you" (Le 17:10,12-14), an extension which we do not trace in other dietary precepts; e.g. the thing which died of itself was to be given "unto the stranger that is in thy gates" (De 14:21). As regards blood, the prohibition indeed dates from the declaration to Noah against "flesh with the life thereof which is the blood thereof," in Ge 9:4, which was perhaps regarded by Moses as still binding upon all Noah's descendants. The grounds, however, on which the similar-precept of the Apostolic Council, in Ac 15:20-21, appears based, relate not to any obligation resting still unbroken on the Gentile world, but to the risk of promiscuous offence' to the Jews and Jewish Christians, "for Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him." Hence this abstinence is reckoned among necessary things" (τὰ ἐπάναγκες), and "things offered to idols," although not solely, it may be presumed, on the same grounds, are placed in the same class with "blood and things strangled" (ἀπέχεσθαι εἰδωλοθύτων καὶ αἵματος καὶ πνικτοῦ, vert. 28, 29). Besides these, we find the prohibition twice recurring against "seething a kid in its mother's milk." It is added, as a final injunction to the code of dietary precepts in Deuteronomy 14:after the crowning declaration of ver. 21, "for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God;" but in Ex 23:19; Ex 34:26, the context relates to the bringing first-fruits to the altar, and to the "angel" who was to "go before" the people. To this precept we shall have occasion further to return.

The general distinction of clean and unclean is rightly observed by Michaelis (Smith's Transl. art. 202, etc.) to have its parallel among all nations, there being universally certain creatures regarded as clean, i.e. fit for food, and the rest as the opposite (comp. Le 11:47). With the greater number of nations, however, this is only a traditional usage based merely, perhaps, either on an instinct relating to health, or on a repugnance which is to be regarded as an ultimate fact in itself, and of which no further account is to be given. Thus Michaelis (as above) remarks that in a certain part of Germany rabbits are viewed as unclean, i.e. are advisedly excluded from diet. English feelings as regards the frog and the snail, contrasted with those of Continentals, supply another close parallel. Now, it is not unlikely that nothing more than this is intended in the distinction between "clean" and "unclean" in the directions given to Noah. The intention seems to have been that creatures recognized, on whatever ground, as unfit for human food, should not be preserved in so large a proportion as those whose number might be diminished by that consumption. The dietary code of the Egyptians, and the traditions which have descended among the Arabs, unfortified, certainly down to the time of Mohammed, and in some cases later, by any legislation whatever, so far as we know, may illustrate the probable state of the Israelites. If the law seized upon such habits as were current; among the people, perhaps enlarging their scope and range, the whole scheme of tradition, instinct, and usage so enlarged might become a ceremonial barrier, having a relation at once to the theocratic idea, to the general health of the people, and to their separateness as a nation.