Leviticus 11:2-47 Speak to the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which you shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.… The eagle, darting down from the hills of Moab or Bashan, or from the heights of Lebanon, would often teach the shepherd who saw his flock thus endangered. Those by the sea shore would have the same lesson taught them when the sight or cry of the sea-eagle and fish-hawk called to their mind that God had made a difference between the clean and unclean even in the fowls of the air. The vulture, in their streets or highways, allured by the scent of death, and the kite, poised on its wings till it found a prey upon which to dart down, and the hoarse, unpleasant note of the raven would constantly recall the same distinctions, while their loathsome qualities would serve to make the feeling of uncleanness more and more detestable to the men of Israel. While in the wilderness, and afterwards on their borders, they would meet with the ostrich, whose disagreeable cries, voracious habits, and parental unkindness, would all contribute to deepen their aversion to whatever was unclean. And not less so the small, but most ravenous night-hawk that flies in at the open windows and seeks the life of infants; and the seagull incessantly watching for its victims, over whom it screams in savage delight; and the hawk, so furious in its attack on the birds of the air; and the owl at evening, awake for designs of destruction. All these, every time they were been, helped to deepen Israel's remembrance of the difference between holy and unholy, and to give them intimations of the hateful qualities of sin. (A. A. Bonar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. |
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