"clean" and "unclean," were eminently calculated to prevent intimacies with the Egyptians and Canaanites and other idolaters, and to prevent their " table from becoming a snare; and that which should have been for their welfare becoming a trap." (Psalm lxix. 22.) It has, consequently, been well remarked, that "this statute, above all others, established not only a political and sacred, but a physical separation of the Jews from all other people. It made it next to impossible for the one to mix with the other, either in meals or in marriage, or in any familiar connexion. Their opposite customs in the article of diet not only precluded a friendly and comfortable intimacy, but generated mutual contempt and abhorrence. The Jews religiously abhorred the society, manners, and institutions of the Gentiles, because they viewed their own abstinence from forbidden. meats, as a token of peculiar sanctity, and of course regarded other nations, who wanted this sanctity, as vile and detestable. They considered themselves as secluded by God himself from the profane world, by a peculiar worship, government, law, dress, mode of living, and country. Though this separation from other people, on which the law respecting food was founded, created in the Jews a criminal pride, and hatred of the Gentiles; yet it forcibly operated as a preservative from heathen idolatry, by precluding all familiarity with idolatrous nations."* "Ye shall therefore," said JEHOVAH, "put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean; and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean: and ye shall be holy unto me; for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine." Levit. xx. 25, 26.

Tappan's Lectures, quoted in Harris's Natural Hist. of the Bible. Dissertation iii. p. 27,

2. TO PROMOTE HEALTH AND COMFORT.

IN the distinction of animals into "clean" and "unclean," particular reference appears to have been made to their suitableness for food, those being accounted "clean" which afforded a considerable proportion of wholesome nutriment, and those being condemned as "unclean," which were of a gross and unwholesome nature. "While God keeps the eternal interests of man steadily in view," observes a learned Commentator,* "he does not forget his earthly comfort; he is at once solicitous both for the health of his body and his soul. He has not forbidden certain aliments because he is a Sovereign, but because he knew they would be injurious to the health and morals of his people. Solidfooted animals, such as the horse, and many-toed animals, such as the cat, &c. are here prohibited. Beasts which have bifid or cloven-hoofs, such as the ox, are considered as proper for food, and therefore commanded. The former are unclean, i. e. unwholsome, affording a gross nutriment, often the parent of scorbutic and scrophulous disorders; the latter clean, i. e. affording a copious and wholesome nutriment, and not laying the foundation of any disease. Ruminating animals, i. e. those which chew the cud, concoct their food better than the others, which swallow it with little mastication, and therefore the flesh contains more of the nutritious juices, and is more easy of digestion, and consequently of assimilation to the solids and fluids of the human body: on this account they are termed clean, i. e. peculiarly wholesome and fit for food. The animals which do not ruminate do not concoct their food so well, and hence they abound with gross animal juices, which yield a com paratively unwholesome nutriment to the human system. Even the animals which have bifid hoofs, but do not chew

Dr. Adam Clarke's Comment. on Levit. xi.

the cud, such as the swine; and those who chew the cud, but are not bifid, such as the hare and rabbit, are by Him, who knows all things, forbidden, because He knew them to be, comparatively, innutritive.-On the same ground he forbad all fish that have not both fins and scales, such as the conger, eel, &c. which abound in gross juices, and fat, which very few stomachs are able to digest."

"One of the most distinguishing traits in the character of Moses, as a legislator," says a celebrated French writer, "and one in which he was the most imitated by those who in after ages gave laws to the Eastern world, was his constant attention to the health of the people. He forbad the use of pork, of the hare, &c. of fish without scales whose flesh is gross and oily, and all kinds of heavy meat, as the fat of the bullock, of the kid, and of the lamb; an inhibition supremely wise in a country, where the excessive heat relaxing the fibres of the stomach rendered digestion peculiarly slow and difficult."*

"The flesh of the eel and some other fish," says Larcher, "thickened the blood, and by checking the perspiration excited all those maladies connected with the leprosy ;" and even goes so far as to suppose that this was the reason why the Egyptian priests proscribed certain kinds of fish and caused them to be accounted sacred, the better to preserve the people from eating so unwholesome a kind of food:† -and Plutarch gives a similar reason for swine being held in general abhorrence by them, notwithstanding they sacrificed them at the full moon, to the Moon and to Bacchus, "The milk of the sow," he remarks, "occasioned leprosies, which was the reason why the Egyptians entertained so great an aversion for this animal."-The innutritive

M. de Pastoret. Moyse, considere' comme Legislateur et comme Moraliste. Chap. vii. p. 528. Paris, 1788, 8vo.

+ Beloe's Herodotus, ut sup.

Ibid. vol. i. pp. 231, 272.

quality of the animals forbidden is also learnedly defended by Michaelis in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, Vol. iii. article 503, pp. 230, 231;-and by Wagenseil in his Tela Ignea Satana, in Carminis R. Lipmanni Confutat. pp. 555, 556, who observes that the Jews not only considered the eating of pork as inducing the leprosy, but regarded the very name of swine as ominous, and avoided naming it if possible; and that the Talmudists say, "If a child sucks the milk of a sow it will become leprous."

From these and similar views of the dietetic character of the Mosaic distinction of animals into "clean" and "unclean," Lowman judiciously observes, that "the food allowed the Hebrew nation, as an holy people, were the gentler sort of creatures, and of most common use, such as were bred about their houses and in their fields, and were, in a sort, domestic: they were creatures of the cleanest feeding, and which gave the most wholesome nourishment, and were of a better taste, and might be had in greater plenty and perfection by a proper care of their breeding and feeding: they seem, therefore, naturally fit to be chosen as a better kind of food: and if it became the Hebrews as an holy nation, to have any ritual distinction of foods, could any thing have been devised more proper than to prefer such foods as were the best foods, most easy to be had, and in the greatest perfection, most useful and most profitable to the industrious husbandman? Was not this much better than to give encouragement to hunting of wild beasts and following birds of prey, no ways so fit for food nor so easy to be had, and hardly consistent with the innocency and mildness of a pastoral and domestic life? Such a difference as the ritual makes between foods, was wisely appointed to encourage the improvement of their ground, to contribute to the health of their bodies, and to the ease of their employment in life, no inconsiderable part of the blessings of the promised land."*

*Lowman, Rational of the Ritual of the Hebrew Worship, p. 220.

3. TO INFLUENCE MORAL CHARACTER.

THIS object was promoted in the Mosaic distinction of animals,-by impressing the minds of the Israelites with the conviction that as they were chosen by God to be "a peculiar people," it was their duty to endeavour to become "a holy nation;"-by prohibiting the eating of those animals, which by their gross and feculent nature as food would induce or increase any vicious propensities;-by symbolizing the dispositions and conduct to be encouraged and cultivated, or to be abhorred and avoided;-and by gradually weaning the mind from the superstitious influence produced by the manners of the Egyptians, and restoring it to soundness and spirituality.

The following extracts will show, that these reasons have received the sanction both of Jewish and Christian writers of different countries and in different ages.-Levi Barcelona, a Rabbinical writer, says, "As the body is the seat of the soul, God would have it a fit instrument for its companion, and therefore removes from his people all those obstructions which may hinder the soul in its operations; for which reason all such meats are forbidden as breed ill blood; among which if there may be some whose hurtfulness is neither manifest to us nor to physicians, wonder not at it, for the faithful Physician who forbids them is wiser than any of us."*—Aristeas, in his History of the Septuagint, states, that when sent by Ptolemy Philadelphus, to procure translators of the Sacred Books of the Jews into Greek, for the royal library, Eleazer, the high-priest, in answer to his enquiries respecting the Law of Moses, gave the following explanation of the precepts concerning "clean" and "unclean" animals: "Moses," he observes, "hath very well

• Precept lxxix. quoted in Harris's Nat. Hist. of the Bible. Dissert. iii,