1 “You areathe children of the Lord your God; byou shall not cut yourselves nor1 shave the front of your head for the dead.
2aFor you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
4aThese are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,
5 the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the1 mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.
6 And you may eat every animal with cloven hooves, having the hoof split into two parts, andthat chews the cud, among the animals.
7 Nevertheless, of those that chew the cud or have cloven hooves, you shall not eat, suchas these: the camel, the hare, and the rock hyrax; for they chew the cud but do not have cloven hooves; they are unclean for you.
8 Also the swine is unclean for you, because it has cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud; you shall not eat their flesh aor touch their dead carcasses.
9a“These you may eat of all that are in the waters: you may eat all that have fins and scales.
10 And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.
21a“You shall not eat anything that dies ofitself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; bfor you are a holy people to the Lord your God. “cYou shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Tithing Principles
22a“You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year.
23aAnd you shall eat before the Lord your God, in the place where He chooses to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil, of bthe firstborn of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.
In verse 1, we see how God regarded Israel. Moses wrote Deuteronomy at the end of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, forty years after their release from Egypt. After spending many generations under Egyptian rule, the Israelites had absorbed certain aspects of Egyptian culture as their own, and many of these were wrong.
Idol worship, which the Israelites quickly returned to with the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:4), was just one of the wrongs that God needed to fix. He speaks here of not mutilating the body or shaving the head for the dead. The Bible does not clearly explain if the Egyptians practiced cutting themselves or shaving their heads for the dead, but many pagan peoples have done so as a sign of mourning or piety or to attract the attention of their god. God addresses it in a number of places (Leviticus 19:28; 21:5; I Kings 18:28).
