Deuteronomy 14:20-22
The Voice
20 But you can eat anything that flies if it is ritually clean.
21 Don’t eat any meat from an animal you find dead of natural causes because its blood remains in the meat. You may give it to the foreigners in your city, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreign merchant. But don’t eat it yourself; you are people who have been set apart for the Eternal your God. Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Behind these dietary restrictions there’s a moral ideal. The people are being told to set up their community life exactly as the Lord instructs, so that all the other nations will take notice and acknowledge Him (4:6). To do this, they must recognize their own special place in the world, stick to their own proper realms, and not deviate from the way they should live within it. This is another way the people are to express their exclusive loyalty to the Lord. In other words, the sacrificial food for God encompasses the daily food for the people. And the Israelites can only eat animals, birds, and insects that exemplify and support life and do not have characteristics and locomotive ability that blur them between these three habitations of land, sea, and sky.
Moses: 22 Every year, when the seeds you’ve sown in your fields have grown into crops, make sure you set aside a tenth of the produce.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
