“You must not eat any detestable animals that are ceremonially unclean.
Parallel translations
- WEB You shall not eat any abominable thing.
- KJV Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.
- BSB You must not eat any detestable thing.
- NKJV “You shall not eat any detestable thing.
- NASB “You shall not eat any detestable thing.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Israel must not eat anything detestable. Their holiness extends even to what they put on the table.
Overview
This verse introduces the dietary laws by stating the governing principle: God's people must avoid what he calls abominable. Holiness touched the ordinary matter of food, marking Israel as distinct among the nations. These regulations, fulfilled and set aside in Christ who declared all foods clean, taught the deeper lesson of being set apart for God.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Ezek 4:14Then I said, “Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable meat into my mouth!”
- Rom 14:14I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself; except that to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
- Lev 11:43You shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creeps. You shall not make yourselves unclean with them, that you should be defiled thereby.
- Lev 20:25“‘You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean: and you shall not make yourselves abominable by animal, or by bird, or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have separated from you as unclean for you.
- Acts 10:12–14in which were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild animals, reptiles, and birds of the sky.
- Titus 1:15To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
- 1 Cor 10:28But if anyone says to you, “This was offered to idols,” don’t eat it for the sake of the one who told you, and for the sake of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness.”
- Isa 65:4who sit among the graves, and spend nights in secret places; who eat pig’s meat, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Moses promised a Prophet like himself to whom Israel must listen (18:15); Jesus is that Prophet, the one who keeps the covenant we broke and becomes the curse for us by hanging on a tree (Gal 3:13).
How Deuteronomy 14:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.