4148 — Swine's Flesh and the Mouse
Please explain Isa. 66:17. Does that text mean that a class of people eat swine's flesh and the mouse, and also the abomination? or does it mean that the three shall be destroyed together at the coming of the Lord? Does it refer to swine's flesh eaten in general, or does it have special reference to a special class of idol-worshipers? It would seem to have reference to those who rejected God and His ordinances. The Revised Version reads: "They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves to go unto the gardens [margin, in the gardens], behind one tree [or Asherah, an idolatrous image] in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, they shall come to an end together, saith Jehovah." Now it does not mean three different classes, but it means the people who do such things as that shall come to an end together. It would have reference to any system of self-salvation, and ordinances of that sort which led people to reject God and the instruction of His word. Such as that, of course, would naturally indulge in the things which the Lord had prohibited, or designated as unclean and unwholesome. Lowth declares that these were after the rites of the heathen gods, and renders: "They who sanctify themselves, and purify themselves, in the gardens, after the rites of Achad; in the midst of those who eat swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the field-mouse." That is, all these various classes who utterly disregard God's instructions, and walk in their own ways, shall come to an end together. What are called shell-fish, are four times, in Leviticus 11, called an abomination. The text may refer to such things as that. The exact technical meaning is of a great deal less importance than is the class of people there described, those who disregard God.