The Holy and the Profane

14:1 You are children1 of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald2 for the sake of the dead. 14:2 For you are a people holy3 to the Lord your God. He4 has chosen you to be his people, prized5 above all others on the face of the earth. 14:3 You must not eat any forbidden6 thing. 14:4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 14:5 the ibex,7 the gazelle,8 the deer,9 the wild goat, the antelope,10 the wild oryx,11 and the mountain sheep.12 14:6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud.13 14:7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger.14 (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you). 14:8 Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves,15 it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. 14:9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 14:10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you. 14:11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 14:12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle,16 the vulture,17 the black vulture,18 14:13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah19 after its species, 14:14 every raven after its species, 14:15 the ostrich,20 the owl,21 the seagull, the falcon22 after its species, 14:16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl,23 14:17 the jackdaw,24 the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 14:18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, the bat, 14:19 and any winged thing on the ground are impure to you—they may not be eaten.25 14:20 You may eat any clean bird. 14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages26 and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.27