Deuteronomy 14:1 - Meaning and Application

Moses reminds Israel how God had honored them with three special privileges. These were their glory, and they also pointed ahead to the spiritual blessings God gives his people in Christ. First, there was election, meaning God chose them, not because of any merit or good works he saw in them, but because he wanted to show the riches of his power and grace among them. He did not choose them because they were already a special people by their own dedication, but he chose them so they might become such by his grace, and believers are chosen in the same way (Ephesians 1:4).

Second, there was adoption in Deuteronomy 14:1. They were the children of the Lord their God, formed by him into a people and owned by him as his family. They were near to him, closer than any other nation. Israel is called God’s son, his firstborn, not because God needed children, but because they were like orphans and needed a father. Every Israelite was truly a child of God, sharing in his nature, his favor, his love, and his blessing. What great love the Father has given us!

Third, there was sanctification in Deuteronomy 14:2. They were a holy people, set apart for God, devoted to his service, and meant for his praise. They lived under a holy law, served at a holy tabernacle, and followed holy ceremonies connected with it. God’s people are under the strongest duty to be holy, and if they are holy, it is because God’s grace has made them so. The Lord has set them apart for himself and fitted them for his service and for enjoying him.

Because God had raised them up in this way, they were also to keep a sober difference from the nations around them. They must not copy the superstitious customs of idolaters and so bring themselves down to their level. The Septuagint renders this as a command, “Be children of the Lord your God,” meaning, live in a way that fits your dignity as God’s children and do nothing to shame that name or lose its privileges. In two things especially they were to stand apart.

First, they were to be different in mourning. “You shall not cut yourselves” forbids more than one thing. It may forbid the cutting of their bodies at funerals, whether to show grief or to offer their own blood to false gods. It may also forbid the wounds and marks made in idol worship, like Baal’s prophets did (1 Kings 18:28), or the practice of branding their flesh with signs for certain gods. That would be a serious sin for people who already carried in their bodies the mark of the Lord Jehovah through circumcision.

So they were not to harm or disfigure their bodies for any reason. This is like a father telling a child, “Do not cut yourself.” The point of commands that call us to deny ourselves is often simple: do yourself no harm. Even hard providences are sometimes meant to keep us from hurting ourselves. Knives are taken away so we do not cut ourselves. People set apart for God must not treat their bodies carelessly, because the body belongs to the Lord and should be used for him.

They were also not to give themselves over to deep, uncontrolled grief for the death of loved ones. They were not to show sorrow by cutting themselves or making bald spots over the eyes, like men who are enraged or hopeless over the dead. Christians are to grieve, but not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). One Jewish writer, quoted by Ainsworth, understood this law as a warning against excessive grief for dead relatives. If your father dies, you are not to sorrow without measure, because you are not fatherless. You still have a Father who lives forever, the holy blessed God, and you are his children (Deuteronomy 14:1). But an unbeliever, when his father dies, has no father to help him in trouble, since he has called a stock his father and a stone his mother (Jeremiah 2:27). We who have God to trust and heaven to hope for must hold ourselves up with that hope in every sorrow.

Second, they were to be different in their food. Many kinds of meat that were wholesome and commonly eaten by other people were to be avoided as unclean. This law had already been given in Leviticus 11:2, where it was explained more fully. Here it seems to mark them off as a distinct people. Their food laws would make them noticeable in mixed gatherings and would help keep them from blending in with idolatrous neighbors.

As for land animals, the law lists in more detail which kinds they could eat than Leviticus does. This shows they had no reason to complain about being denied pork, hares, and rabbits, which are now common foods. They were allowed a great variety of meat, including ordinary butcher’s meat, which was used in sacrifice, and also game, which was plentiful in Canaan, such as the hart, the roe-buck, and the fallow deer (Deuteronomy 14:4-5). Though these animals were never brought to God’s altar, they were allowed at their own tables (see Deuteronomy 12:22). When they could freely eat from so many kinds, like Adam could eat from every tree in the garden, those were clearly guilty who, to satisfy a sinful appetite or to honor idols, ate pork and had broth made from forbidden things in their bowls (Isaiah 65:4).

For fish, there is only one broad rule: anything without fins and scales was unclean and forbidden. This would include shellfish, eels, and other water creatures not fit for food (Deuteronomy 14:9-10). For birds, no broad rule is given. Instead, certain birds are named as unclean, and few of those are the kinds people commonly eat today. Anything not expressly forbidden was allowed (Deuteronomy 14:11-20). Of all clean birds, they might eat.

They were also forbidden, first, to eat the flesh of any animal that died on its own, because the blood had not been drained from it. Besides the ceremonial uncleanness this brought on them (from Lev. 11:39), such meat is not wholesome, and people do not normally eat it except in poverty. Second, they were forbidden to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This may have been meant to stop a luxury practice, treating it as a delicacy, or to keep them from a pagan custom of the nations around them.

The Chaldee paraphrases understand this as forbidding the eating of meat and milk together, and on that reading it would also rule out using butter as a sauce with meat. As to all these food laws, the law itself shows they belonged only to the Jews and were not moral laws for all time. What they were not allowed to eat, they could give to a foreigner who lived among them after turning from idolatry, though he was not circumcised, or they could sell it to a Gentile outsider who came into their land for trade but did not settle there (Deu. 14:21).

That clear difference shows how special Israel was as a holy people. The gospel also makes it plain that these food rules are now out of date and no longer binding. “Every creature of God is good,” and nothing is now to be rejected or called common and unclean (1 Tim. 4:4).