From time to time the scriptures talk about
But most of the time the scriptures use these terms not literally, but
And if unclean things were used for worship anyway, or unclean people worshiped without first purifying themselves, there were dire consequences.
Leviticus 10.1-11 CSB - 1 Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his own firepan, put fire in it, placed incense on it, and presented unauthorized fire before the L
ORD , which he had not commanded them to do. 2 Then fire came from the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD . 3 Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD has spoken: - I will demonstrate my holiness
- to those who are near me,
- and I will reveal my glory
- before all the people.”
- And Aaron remained silent.
- 4 Moses summoned Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come here and carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to a place outside the camp.” 5 So they came forward and carried them in their tunics outside the camp, as Moses had said.
- 6 Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not let your hair hang loose and do not tear your clothes, or else you will die, and the L
ORD will become angry with the whole community. However, your brothers, the whole house of Israel, may weep over the fire that the LORD caused. 7 You must not go outside the entrance to the tent of meeting or you will die, for the LORD ’s anointing oil is on you.” So they did as Moses said. - 8 The L
ORD spoke to Aaron: 9 “You and your sons are not to drink wine or beer when you enter the tent of meeting, or else you will die; this is a permanent statute throughout your generations. 10 You must distinguish between the holy and the common, and the clean and the unclean, 11 and teach the Israelites all the statutes that the LORD has given to them through Moses.”
The reason the L
Well, that’s what jerks we’ve become when we try to foist our preferences upon the L
The L
Some of us Christians get this,
Well, here’s a pointer in the correct direction: What does God consider ritually clean?
Again, not literally clean.
Once they became ritually unclean, the ancient Hebrews had to get ritually clean. How they did this was simple: They had to wash. Literally wash.
Fr’instance a clean animal was called clean.
Likewise you could be literally clean: You just bathed, you put on clean clothes, you were walking to temple all spotless… and you unintentionally touch something an unclean person just touched.
God’s rules for ritual cleanliness were pretty strict. So much so, your chances of being ritually unclean were better than average.
- Have sex? Unclean.
Lv 15.18 - Give birth? Unclean.
Lv 12.2, 5 - It’s your time of the month? Unclean; you and everyone who touches you and your stuff.
Lv 15.19 - Touch a corpse, or be in the home where someone died? Unclean.
Lv 19.11-19 - Touch vermin? Unclean, and you gotta be rid of anything the vermin touched.
Lv 11.31-35, 43-44 - Touch a dead animal, even a dead clean animal? Unclean.
Lv 11.39
And I haven’t even got to leprosy and the kosher rules yet.
Unless the Law declared you unclean for multiple days, or you had to have a priest declare you clean, the usual way to get clean was to wash yourself and your clothes, and wait till sundown. Hence by Jesus’s day, Pharisees washed themselves daily. Pharisees believed they needed to live a life of worship (and they’re right), but to do so, they had to stay as ritually clean as priests working in temple. So they had a whole ritual to it: Put on your clothes, go to a place with running water deep enough so you could stand up in it and be fully immersed, and then you were clean. In Christianity, this became
The kosher rules.
In
In summary, here’s the rules.
- EAT: Ruminants (cud-chewers) with split hooves, like an antelope, cow, deer, ibex, goat, or sheep. DON’T EAT: Animals which lack either feature— ruminants without split hooves, like a camel or rabbit; split-hooved animals which aren’t ruminants, like a boar or pig; non-ruminant, single-hooved animals, like a horse or zebra.
Lv 11.2-8 - EAT: Sea creatures with fins and scales. DON’T EAT: Sea creatures which lack either feature. Shellfish lack both. Marine mammals, mollusks (i.e. octopus and squid), crustaceans, and catfish lack scales.
Lv 11.9-12 Yep, lobster and clam chowder are out. - EAT: Birds. DON’T EAT: Specific exceptions, which vary by translation: No eating a bustard, buzzard, cormorant, dayyah, eagle, falcon, hawk, heron, hoopoe, jackdaw, kite, osprey, ostrich, owl, pelican, raven, seagull, stork, nor vulture. And (as a reminder the bible’s not a science textbook) no bats.
Lv 11.13-19 - DON’T EAT: Insects. Eat: Four exceptions: Crickets, grasshoppers, katydids (or “bald locusts”), and locusts.
Lv 11.20-23 - DON’T EAT: Certain specific animals, again varying by translation: No eating a chameleon, crocodile, ferret, gecko, lizard, mouse, mole, rat, skink, snail, tortoise, or weasel.
Lv 11.29-30 - DON’T EAT: Anything with paws (i.e. cats and dogs). Anything which crawls on its belly (i.e. snakes and worms). Anything with many legs (i.e. caterpillars and centipedes). Avoid even touching the vermin on the ground.
Lv 11.41-42 - DON’T EAT: Anything which died from natural causes, or which you’ve found dead.
Dt 14.21 No roadkill! - NEVER EAT: Blood.
Ge 9.4 Always drain the blood from meat before eating it. - Don’t boil a goat kid in its mother’s milk.
Ex 23.19 The rabbis have expanded this commandment into the whole separation of meat and dairy you find in Orthodox Jewish households. Separate plates, utensils, even refrigerators, for meat and dairy. And no cheeseburgers. If meat touches a plate meant for dairy, you gotta break the plate and bury it out back. No I’m not kidding.
“Oh, I have no problem with the kosher rules,” I’ve heard certain Jews claim, “because I’m vegan.” Um… there are such things as non-kosher fruits and vegetables. If farmers violated God’s commands in the way they grew or harvested them, they’re unclean. If you grew multiple species in a field,
Since these particular commands are directed primarily to farmers, not the consumers, you’re fine if you don’t knowingly buy and eat such vegetables and fruits. Although certain rabbis will definitely disagree.
And speaking of the rabbis: In the interest of making really, really sure nobody breaks the rules, Orthodox rabbis expanded these commands greatly. I already mentioned the customs about meat and dairy: It goes further. Much further.
Fr’instance, certain rabbis require one of them to inspect all food animals, just to be sure they’re raised and butchered according to custom. The animals must be kosher, in good health—can’t be sick, injured, or dying, so the butcher is simply killing them before they die on their own. They must be ritually killed (called shekhíta) in a way which effectively drains all blood, and in a way which doesn’t “tear” the meat.
Exceptions are made for certain animal proteins. Supposedly eggs aren’t meat. Supposedly kosher gelatin has been so heavily rendered, the rabbis are pretty sure it no longer resembles meat anymore. (Of course, you still can’t make kosher gelatin out of horse hooves.)
The rabbis get pretty particular about how close the plants grow in a vegetable garden. Can’t have the tomatoes too close to the cucumbers. And since it’s forbidden to crossbreed animals,
Back in bible times, if you killed an animal for ritual sacrifice, certain parts of the animal would be burned up, and other parts would go to the priests. Certain rabbis teach this should be done in the case of every animal: Entrails would usually be burned, so they’re off-limits. Certain cuts of meat should be given to the nearest available Levite—any descendant of Levi who goes to your synagogue. Since butchering and sacrificing are two different things, this sounds mighty iffy to me—especially when those rabbis threaten to kick you out of the synagogue if you won’t.
As a Christian, the kosher rules are optional (I’ll explain why in a bit), and I myself have taken that option. I don’t worry about the rabbis’ rulings, ’cause Jesus is my rabbi. So it pretty much comes down to avoiding pork and shellfish. A cheeseburger involves neither a goat nor its mother, so I’ll eat ’em and enjoy them thoroughly. Conservative or Orthodox rabbis may not consider me kosher, but other Jews would, and certainly Christians would.
Is uncleanliness sin?
Some Christians like to point to the cleanliness rules in the Law, and point out how utterly impossible it is to keep these rules. ’Cause it is impossible. The only way you could live a life without ritual uncleanliness is if you somehow had your genitals removed at birth without getting a drop of blood anywhere, then spent the rest of your life in a hermetically sealed bubble, tended to only by people who were themselves ritually clean. Good luck that ever happening.
Thing is, what are the consequences God decrees for uncleanness? Well… you can’t worship. Not till you’re clean. That’s it.
If you never bother to get clean—if you give up on ritual cleanliness altogether, and live like a pagan, that’s a sin. That’d get a Hebrew banished.
Because you didn’t.
Case in point: Christ Jesus. He never sinned, y’know.
As an adult, Jesus was in the habit of touching people to heal them, including unclean people. He touched lepers.
Now, various Christians claim because Jesus’s touch healed people, they didn’t transfer uncleanness to him; he transferred cleanness to them. And yeah, he totally cleansed ’em. But regardless of what he made them, regardless of anyone’s noble intentions or compassion or power to heal, the Law states touching all these people renders you ritually unclean. Still gotta wash before temple or synagogue.
To say the Law didn’t count when it came to Jesus, implies he technically did sin but lives under a special dispensation. But that’s not what the scriptures teach. Jesus lived under the Law,
Do Christians need to follow these commands?
Historically, Christians have ignored the cleanliness laws.
Not always for the best of reasons. Dispensationalists claim the Law doesn’t count anymore, ’cause Jesus abolished it, so they don’t worry about any of the commands… except the ones they like. (Namely the Ten Commandments, and sometimes the anti-gay ones.)
The rest of us correctly recognize we don’t need them anymore. Ritual cleanliness is so people could go to temple. Okay, so where do we go to temple? Well actually, we are the temple.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should immediately rush out, roll around in feces, and start eating weird animals. Paul still taught the Corinthians, same as he’d teach any Christian, including us, “Touch nothing unclean.”
’Cause it’s still unsanitary to ignore them. Wash yourselves! Watch out for bodily fluids. Don’t leave dead and dirty things around. Keep mildew and vermin out of the house. Don’t let infectious diseases go without treatment. Certain animals aren’t good for you. Science has often confirmed the wisdom behind a lot of these commands; it’s just plain dumb to dismiss them. Medieval Christians did, and it significantly shortened their lifespans. Vermin-spread plagues nearly wiped Europe out more than once.
Christians tend to ignore the kosher rules because we enjoy those foods. Again, it’s not sin to break them; bacon is not rebellion against God. But is it wise? Bacon’s hardly a health food. But I leave the kosher issue between you and God: Don’t take his approval for granted, but talk to him about it. And if he personally instructs you to live kosher, never prioritize your stomach over him.
