Rules about food
1 You are people who belong to the Lord your God. When someone dies, you are sad. But do not cut your bodies. Do not cut off all the hair from the front of your head.
14:1People from other nations would cut their bodies or their hair when their friends died.
2 You are the Lord's own special people. He has chosen you to belong to him. You are much more valuable to him than any other people in the whole earth.
3 Do not eat anything that God says is unclean. 4 You may eat the meat of these animals: cows, sheep, goats, 5 deer, wild goats, mountain goats, antelopes and wild sheep. 6 You may eat any animal with feet that have two separate parts. They must also bring their food back into their mouths and eat it again.
14:6All the animals in verses 4 and 5 have feet that grow in two parts. They also bring their food back into their mouths and eat it again. God said that these were ‘clean’ animals. That means that the Israelites could eat them.
7 But you must not eat these animals: camels, wild rabbits and rock badgers. They eat their food a second time, but they do not have feet with two separate parts. For this reason they are unclean food for you. 8 You may not eat pigs, either. They have feet in two parts but they do not eat their food a second time. You must not eat any meat from these animals. You must not even touch their dead bodies.
9 You may eat any fish that has fins and scales. 10 But other things that live in the water do not have fins or scales. Those are not clean food for you. Do not eat them.
14:9Most fish have fins and scales on their bodies. They use their fins when they are swimming. The scales are hard pieces of skin that cover the fish's body.
11 You may eat any clean bird. 12-18 But these birds you must not eat: eagles, vultures, kites, owls, hawks, falcons, buzzards, ostriches, seagulls, storks, herons, pelicans, cormorants, hoopoes and bats.
14:12-18These birds eat dirty pieces of dead animals as their food. We do not have the exact names in English for all these birds.
19 Some insects have wings but they walk on the ground. Insects like that are unclean food for you. You must not eat them. 20 But you may eat any clean insect that has wings.
21 You must not eat anything that you find dead already. You may give it to a foreign person who lives in any of your towns. He may eat it. You may give it to him or sell it to him. But you yourselves are special people who belong to the Lord your God.
You must not cook a young goat in the milk from its mother.
