Swine’s Flesh

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 2, 1872

FORBIDDEN IN THE WORD OF GOD.

Among the unclean beasts in almost universal use as food in our time is the swine. We speak particularly of this because of its nature and very common and abundant use by Christians. These profess to receive the word of God as a rule of faith and practice, and yet that very word says of the swine, “It is unclean unto you. Ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcass.” Deut. 14: 8. If it be said that this prohibition is Jewish, and, therefore, not binding upon Christians, then we reply:—

1. The distinction between the clean beasts and the unclean, recognized at the flood, long before the existence of a single Jew, was established upon the very character of God’s living creatures. This distinction received the sanction of law in the days of Moses; not, however, because God would have an arbitrary rule for the Jews for sixteen centuries, but because those things forbidden were of themselves unclean, and abominable for man to use as food.

2. The character of the swine is plainly given as the reason why the Hebrews should not eat of it, nor touch the dead carcass. “It is unclean unto you.” With this agree the words of the prophet, which class swine’s flesh with the broth of abominable things. If it be said that these words were given through Jewish prejudice, then we reply that it is the great God that speaks. He changes not and never speaks from prejudice. Hear him:

“I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine’s flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels.” Isa. 65: 2–4.

“For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire; for by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh; and the slain of the Lord shall be many. They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens, behind one tree in the midst [marginal reading, one after another] eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.” Chap. 66: 15–17.

The candid reader, after a careful examination of the chapters from which we have quoted, will entertain doubts as to their application to the Jewish age. In fact, it is evident that they apply to the present age, and that the last quotation, with its threatened judgment for sins, such as eating swine’s flesh, applies definitely to the close of the present age.

Dr. Adam Clarke once said that if he were to offer a burnt-offering to the devil, he should choose a pig stuffed with tobacco. And when invited to ask the blessing at the table, he used these words: “Lord, bless this bread, these vegetables and this fruit; and if thou canst bless under the gospel what thou didst curse under the law, bless this swine’s flesh.”

God said of the flesh of swine in the days of Moses: “It is unclean unto you.” What change can have taken place to make it clean, and a proper article of food for Christians? Has God changed his mind on the subject? Has man so changed that what was unclean as an article of food for the Hebrews has become clean to Christians? Or, has the change taken place in the nature of the pork? Has the change from the Jewish dispensation improved the nature of hogs? Did the death of the Son of God sanctify the swine? And does the freedom of the world-wide proclamation of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ give liberty to Christians to eat those things which were an abomination if eaten by the Hebrews?

“But, did not God make the swine?”

We reply, that he did; and that he also made dogs, cats, rats, mice, and toads; not, however, for Christians to eat.

“Then for what was the swine made?”

We may not fully understand why God made rats, lizards, hogs, and rattlesnakes. And we are very grateful that we are not obliged to eat all the brutes and reptiles for which we cannot definitely assign other uses. But swine’s grease is used extensively to lubricate carriage and railroad car wheels. And the swine’s nature and taste adapt him to the work of a scavenger, to gather up the filth, and thus prevent impurities in the atmosphere.

The swine delights in filth. He revels in it. He is happiest when nearly buried in it, or satisfying his vile taste with most horrible rottenness. If, by chance, he meets a fellow swine that has lain dead a week, until the carcass has become a blackened mass of putrefaction, he will delight his taste, fatten on carrion, and hold jubilee. He devours that with the keenest relish which is most in harmony with his gross nature.

And, more, the swine is an absorbent. Through his lungs, and the pores of his skin, he takes in miasma, as a sponge absorbs water. His taste and his smell are in harmony with the most abhorrent rottenness.

As a scavenger, the swine takes into his brute system, from the filth he eats, and from the corruptions he delights to breathe, until every particle of him contains the deadly infection. And then, Christian men and women, in their turn, do him the honor to become scavengers to the swine, in serving up the flesh of his abominable dead carcass as an article of food.

And how very careful and prudent these Christian people are not to waste any portion of the precious swine. They will use his heels, where issue the grossest secretions from his corrupted blood, and his snout, which never blushed or turned aside when coming in contact with the most disgusting corruptions, for souse. Some will recognize more of the delicious in a roasted pig’s tail than in a pint of ripe strawberries. And lest a precious scrap of the swine should be left, they even use his miserable intestines for sausage cases.

The terrible influence of swine-eating upon the human system is beyond description. The word scrofula, which represents a nearly universal disease in our day, the almost endless varieties of the taint of which may be named legion, comes from the Latin word scrofa, which signifies “a breeding sow,” the mother of abominations. And it may be a question whether the word, or the terrible disease signified by it, would have had existence, had man never eaten swine’s flesh.

The very character and disposition of the swine accords with his gross habits and diseased flesh. We do not say that the moral evil of swine-eating is proportionate to the physical; but we do say that the very close connection of physical and mental, of matter and mind, would lead one to conclude that the moral evil would run very nearly parallel with the physical ruin. At least, the character of the swine is illy complimented by the poor devils, as Christ was about to cast them out of the man from the tombs, who, seeking their affinity, “besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.”—Health Reformer.