Deuteronomy 14:4-20

The Voice

⁴ Here are some examples of land animals you can eat: oxen from your herds; sheep and goats from your flocks; ⁵ deer, gazelles, roebucks, wild goats, ibexes, antelopes, and mountain sheep, all from the wild. ⁶ The rule is, you can eat any of the animals that has a divided hoof (that is, a hoof separated into two sections) and chews cud. ⁷ You can’t eat an animal just because it chews cud or just because it has a divided hoof; both things have to be true. So, for example, the camel, the rabbit, and the rock badger are impure and can’t be eaten because even though they chew cud, they don’t have a divided hoof. ⁸ The pig is also unclean and can’t be eaten because even though it has a divided hoof, it doesn’t chew cud. Don’t eat the meat of any ritually unclean animals. Don’t even touch their carcasses when they die.

⁹ You can eat anything that lives in the water if it has fins and scales, ¹⁰ but if it doesn’t have fins and scales, then don’t eat it; it’s unclean to you.

¹¹ You can eat any clean bird. ^12-18 But here are some examples of birds you shouldn’t eat: birds that hunt and kill, such as the eagle, the falcon, and all kinds of hawks; birds that eat dead flesh, such as the red kite and any other kind of kite, the vulture, the buzzard, and any kind of raven; things that fly around in the night instead of during the day, such as the horned owl, screech owl, little owl, great owl, white owl, and the bat; birds that feed in the water, such as the seagull, pelican, carrion vulture, cormorant, stork, and every kind of heron; and birds that dig in the ground for their food, such as the hoopoe. ¹⁹ And don’t eat anything that flies in swarms, such as insects, because they are unclean. ²⁰ But you can eat anything that flies if it is ritually clean.