“All winged swarming creatures are unclean for you; they are not to be eaten; but all clean flying creatures you may eat.”-Deuteronomy 14:19-20
We are continuing to study the list of animals the Lord has deemed as CLEAN or UNCLEAN and thus either fit for human consumption or not.
Next up are the sea creatures.
The guiding rule for permissible sea creatures are that they must have BOTH FINS AND SCALES.
Hence, the following are all PROHIBITED for food.
EEL
SHELLFISH
LOBSTERS
CRAB
SQUID
OCTOPUS
WHALE
Next, we know that some birds can be eaten for food because of that famous incident from the Book of Exodus when God sent the Israelites quail in response to their complaining that they wanted to eat meat.
However, the problem with determining whether birds are clean or not is that they don’t really have prominent physical characteristics that would make it easy to distinguish one bird from another.
So instead, we are given a specific list of birds that are considered UNCLEAN.
They are…
EAGLES
VULTURES
OSPREYS
KITES
ANY KIND OF BUZZARD
RAVENS
OSTRICHES
SCREECH-OWLS
SEAGULLS
HAWKS
LITTLE OWLS
GREAT OWLS
HORNED OWLS
PELICANS
BARN OWLS
CORMORANTS
STORKS
ANY KIND OF HERON
HOOPOES
and BATS.
Practically speaking, since there are literally thousands of different species of birds, the early Rabbis through their observations came up with a set of behavioral characteristics that could be applied to birds in general, not just the ones on the list above to judge whether they were CLEAN or not.
Do you have any idea what one of the most prominent characteristics all the birds in the list above have in common?
It is that every one of the birds above feed on dead flesh OR…
…are birds of prey.
Of course, there are other technical characteristics the ancient sages discovered that make certain birds unclean but it is far beyond the scope of what I’m able to detail here.
On the other side of the equation, the primary common characteristic of clean birds was that their diet primarily consisted of grain.
Therefore, birds such as chicken, quail, doves, partridge, ducks and geese, and turkey and the like were all good for human consumption.
Next, when we come to verse 19, we seem to encounter some confusion.
We’re told that ALL “winged swarming things” are unclean.
Yet, immediately afterwards, we’re told that some of them are clean.
What gives?
The key to understanding these verses is the Hebrew word for “swarming”.
In Hebrew “swarming” is SHERETS and refers to those creatures that crawl or swarm.
So we’re talking about things like rats, frogs, insects and sea creatures that crawl on the ocean bottom such as crabs and lobsters.
There are actually very few “winged creatures” that the ancient Israelites considered clean.
For instance, some locusts were considered okay for consumption.
The common characteristic of permissible insects was that they could leap and jump using their two springy back legs.
On the other un-kosher side of the equation however, ants, termites, grubs and others of this ilk were all considered off limits.
[…] get these “flues” and these poxes, this swine flu, this bird flu, this corona virus. https://messianic-revolution.com/d14-10-the-main-difference-between-clean-and-unclean-birds/12/13/21yesterday i spat out an eggroll with pork in it and a hotdog.today i havent really eaten […]