Deuteronomy 14

Modern English Version

Clean and Unclean Food^(A)

14 You are the sons of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. ² For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a peculiar people to Himself, treasured above all the nations that are on the earth.

³ You must not eat any detestable thing. ⁴ These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat, ⁵ the deer, the gazelle, the fallow deer, the wild goat, and the ibex, and the antelope, and the mountain sheep. ⁶ You may eat every animal with divided hooves, with the hoof divided into two parts, and that chews the cud. ⁷ Nevertheless, you may not eat of these that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: the camel, the rabbit, and the coney. For they chew the cud, but their hoof is not divided, therefore they are unclean to you. ⁸ The pig is unclean to you because it divides the hoof, yet it does not chew the cud. You must not eat of their flesh or touch their dead carcass.

⁹ These you shall eat of all that are in the water: All that have fins and scales you may eat. ¹⁰ Whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat. It is unclean to you.

¹¹ You may eat of all clean birds. ¹² However, these are the ones which you cannot eat: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, ¹³ the red kite, the falcon, and the kite after its kind, ¹⁴ every raven after its kind, ¹⁵ and the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, and the hawk after its kind, ¹⁶ the little owl, and the great owl, and the white owl, ¹⁷ the pelican, the carrion vulture, and the cormorant, ¹⁸ the stork, and the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat.

¹⁹ Every creeping thing that flies is unclean to you. They must not be eaten. ²⁰ You may eat all the clean birds.

²¹ You must not eat of anything that dies of itself, but you may give it to the foreigner that is in your gates, so that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Tithes

²² You must be certain to tithe all the produce of your seed, so that the field produces year by year. ²³ You must eat before the Lord your God, in the place in which He shall choose to place His name, the tithe of your grain, of your wine, of your oil, and of the firstborn of your herds and of your flocks so that you may learn to always fear the Lord your God. ²⁴ If the distance is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry it, because the place is too far from you, where the Lord your God shall choose to set His name, when the Lord your God blesses you, ²⁵ then you shall exchange it for money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place which the Lord your God shall choose. ²⁶ Then you may spend that money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever your heart desires, and you may eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you, and your household, ²⁷ and the Levite that is within your gates. You must not forsake him, for he has no portion or inheritance with you.

²⁸ At the end of three years you must bring forth all the tithe of your produce the same year and lay it up within your gates. ²⁹ Then the Levite (because he has no portion or inheritance with you), the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your gates, shall come and shall eat and be satisfied, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.