Leviticus 11:45, commentary and pictures

The verse recalls God bringing Israel up out of Egypt to be their God, making them His people and training them for His purpose through strict training in the wilderness as a people coming from slavery before they entered Canaan. It calls His people to be holy because He is holy, a holiness grounded in that deliverance and covenant relationship and meant to shape conduct in every part of life. The food laws are part of His appointed plan for that training and for holiness, and the instruction includes health principles and sanitary laws in which obedience to God's law is connected with health.

The holiness commanded includes obeying the requirements about clean and unclean food given through Moses, by which certain meats are pronounced unclean and specified as unfit for food. The forbidden animals were unclean and eating them would defile a person, and the distinction is God's will as the supreme law of life to be obeyed even when doing so risks earthly favor and advantage. The prohibition of swine's flesh and the flesh of certain other animals was given because such food is hurtful and not the best food, filling the blood with impurities, making the blood impure, and shortening life. God forbade eating unclean animals to protect life and health and to keep blood pure and preserve mental and physical faculties through simple, healthful food by specifying the animals least objectionable for food, not to exercise arbitrary authority.

Swine were never designed to be eaten under any circumstances, since swine's flesh would fill the system with humors and in that warm climate often produced leprosy, with far more injurious influence there than in a colder climate. Swine were useful as scavengers permitted to run free in a fruitful country to devour decaying substances upon the ground that would poison the atmosphere, which preserved health. If Israel had submitted to God's wise prohibitions He would have removed everything injurious to health and suffered no sickness to be among them, but because they would not submit He gave them what they lusted for. Eating unclean meats, with wine and rich luxuries, does not keep mind and body in the best condition for God's service but clouds the mind, enfeebles brain and muscle, and imperils physical and moral powers. Refusing them in temperance and self-denial keeps mental powers clear and undimmed and physical health sound, giving clear intellect and perfected Christian character to honor and glorify God and stand as representatives of true religion.

The restrictions were right as God gave them, but religious leaders distorted them by extending them into burdensome regulations and ceremonies, going beyond what God required by adding rules such as requiring all drinking water to be strained lest it contain the smallest insect that might be classed with the unclean animals. Jesus exposed this perversion of enforcing such trivial exactions while committing great sins as blind guides who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. By departing from God's plan for holiness, the Israelites failed to reach God's ideal character and lost the spiritual preeminence He intended for them. The verse shows God commanded cleanliness of ancient Israel and He is no less particular now, so His people in the latter days are to keep their bodies and clothing clean and their minds, thoughts, and words pure as they are being prepared for translation to heaven.