Navigating the Murky Waters: The Fish That Point to Christ Text: Leviticus 11:9-12
Introduction: God's Audiovisual Aids
We come now to the book of Leviticus, which for many modern Christians is like a dusty, unopened room in the mansion of Scripture. We know it's there, we assume it's important, but we are not entirely sure what to do with all the furniture. It is filled with laws about sacrifices, skin diseases, and, as we have it before us, strange prohibitions against eating catfish and shrimp. And because we are a pragmatic people, we are tempted to ask what any of this has to do with us. We are not under the ceremonial law, Jesus declared all foods clean, so why not just skip ahead to the Psalms?
But to do this is to misunderstand the very nature of God's revelation. The Old Testament law, and particularly the ceremonial law, was a massive, divinely orchestrated audiovisual aid. It was a picture book for a toddler humanity. God was teaching His people, and us through them, foundational concepts of holiness, purity, and the absolute necessity of making distinctions. The universe is not a monistic blur; it is a cosmos, an ordered reality. God creates by separating, light from darkness, land from sea. And He sanctifies His people by teaching them to separate, holy from common, clean from unclean. These laws were the training wheels of holiness.
The dietary laws in Leviticus 11 are not arbitrary. They are not primitive health codes, although some of them certainly had hygienic benefits. Their primary purpose was pedagogical. They were designed to imprint a certain way of thinking onto the Israelite mind, a worldview that constantly distinguished between that which was acceptable to God and that which was not. And like all the shadows of the Old Testament, they were shaped like the Christ who was coming. They were not just about what went into an Israelite's stomach; they were about what was being formed in his heart. They were a daily, thrice-a-day reminder that they were a people set apart, a people who lived under the authority of a God who cares about the details.
To dismiss these laws as irrelevant is to say that you don't care about the alphabet because you can now read. But you only learned to read because you first learned the alphabet. These distinctions were designed to prepare the world for the ultimate distinction, the one between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. And so, as we look at these regulations concerning seafood, we are not just doing ancient history. We are looking at the grammar of holiness.
The Text
‘These you may eat, whatever is in the water: all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas, or in the rivers, you may eat. But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the swarming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you, and they shall be detestable to you; you may not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses you shall detest. Whatever in the water does not have fins and scales is detestable to you.
(Leviticus 11:9-12 LSB)
The Principle of Propulsion and Protection (v. 9)
The first verse gives us the positive rule, the standard for what is clean and therefore edible from the water.
"‘These you may eat, whatever is in the water: all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas, or in the rivers, you may eat." (Leviticus 11:9)
The criteria are straightforward: fins and scales. To be considered "clean," a creature from the water had to possess both. A fish with scales but no fins was unclean. A fish with fins but no scales was unclean. It had to be both. Why these two things? Because they represent two essential principles of godly living in a fallen world: propulsion and protection.
Fins are for movement, for direction, for propulsion. A creature with fins can navigate the currents. It is not at the mercy of every whim and wave of the sea. It can move with purpose. It can resist the drift. This is a picture of self-government under God. The righteous man is not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine or cultural current. He has a direction, a purpose, given to him by God's Word. He is propelled by the Spirit. He is not a bottom-feeder, passively absorbing whatever the world throws at him. He actively navigates his course.
Scales are for protection. They are the creature's armor. They provide a clear boundary between the fish and its environment. The scales keep the water out and the fish in. This is a picture of sanctification, of being set apart. The Christian is in the world, but not of the world. We are called to maintain a clear distinction between ourselves and the corrupting influences of the world around us. We have armor, the armor of God, which protects us from the filth and the dangers of the deep. Scales are a constant, visible reminder of the Creator/creature distinction, and the distinction between the covenant community and the world.
So, a "clean" fish was a symbolic representation of a mature believer. He is one who can navigate the world (fins) while remaining protected from the world (scales). He has both doctrinal direction and personal holiness. He is not a passive drifter, nor is he an unprotected sponge. This was the ideal that God was setting before His people every time they sat down to eat.
The Detestable Things (v. 10-11)
Verses 10 and 11 give us the negative application of this principle, defining what is unclean.
"But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the swarming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you, and they shall be detestable to you; you may not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses you shall detest." (Leviticus 11:10-11 LSB)
The creatures that fail the test are to be considered "detestable." This is a strong word. It is the Hebrew word sheqets, which means an abomination, a filthy thing. This is not simply a matter of taste or preference. God is attaching a deep moral and spiritual revulsion to these creatures. This included things like eels, catfish, shellfish, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp. These are creatures that tend to be scavengers, bottom-dwellers, or those that move in a serpentine manner. They either lack the armor (scales) or the means of self-directed propulsion (fins), or both.
Think about the symbolism. The crab moves sideways, evasively. The lobster is an armored scavenger, crawling on the bottom. The eel is serpentine, snake-like. The oyster is stationary, passively filtering whatever comes its way. These creatures represent a life that is not lived in conformity to the created order. They represent compromise, worldliness, passivity, and a lack of clear direction and protection. God wanted His people to have a visceral reaction against these things, not just on their plates, but in their souls. He was training their affections. They were to detest the carcasses, even touching them rendered one unclean. This was a constant, physical reminder to hate what God hates.
The world loves ambiguity. It loves the blurring of lines. It loves creatures of the twilight, things that are neither one thing nor another. But God is a God of clarity. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He was teaching Israel to love the clear, the defined, the orderly, and to detest the murky, the ambiguous, and the chaotic. This was spiritual warfare conducted at the dinner table.
The Unwavering Standard (v. 12)
Verse 12 repeats the standard for emphasis, driving the point home with the force of a hammer.
"Whatever in the water does not have fins and scales is detestable to you." (Leviticus 11:12 LSB)
There are no exceptions. The rule is absolute. God does not grade on a curve. This is a black and white issue. This kind of absolute standard is offensive to our modern, relativistic sensibilities. We want options. We want to negotiate. But holiness is not a negotiation. God sets the terms.
This unwavering standard was meant to teach Israel that they could not approach God on their own terms. They had to come His way, according to His rules. You cannot invent your own form of righteousness. You cannot decide for yourself what is clean and what is unclean. You must submit to the revealed standard of God. This prepared them for the gospel. For the gospel is also an unwavering standard. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus is the only way. He is the ultimate standard of what is clean and acceptable to God.
Swimming in the New Covenant
So what does a 21st-century Christian do with this? Do we throw out our shrimp cocktail? No. The coming of Christ brought a fundamental change. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the old laws were "a shadow of the good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1). When the reality arrives, the shadow is no longer needed in the same way. Jesus, in Mark 7, "declared all foods clean." Peter's vision in Acts 10, with the sheet full of unclean animals, was the final nail in the coffin of the ceremonial dietary laws. The barrier between Jew and Gentile was being torn down in Christ, and the dietary laws were a major part of that barrier.
But this does not mean the principles vanish. The audiovisual aid has been retired, but the lesson it taught remains. We are no longer required to distinguish between fish, but we are most certainly required to distinguish between truth and error, between righteousness and sin, between the church and the world. The general equity of this law abides.
We are still called to have fins and scales. We are called to have the "fins" of doctrinal stability, to know what we believe and why, so that we are not "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14). We must be able to navigate the treacherous currents of our secular age with biblical purpose.
And we are still called to have the "scales" of personal holiness. We are to be armored with the righteousness of Christ, presenting a clear boundary to the world. We are not to be spiritual sponges, absorbing the morality and attitudes of the culture. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2). We are to be in the world, like a fish is in the water, but the world is not to be in us.
The ultimate fulfillment of this is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the only man who ever navigated the filthy waters of this world perfectly, propelled by His unwavering commitment to the will of His Father. He was the only one who was perfectly armored, completely scaled, so that though He was tempted in every way as we are, He was without sin. The world could not touch Him. The filth could not penetrate Him.
And now, in the gospel, we are united to Him. We are made members of His body. He has made us clean. He gives us His fins and His scales. By His Spirit, He propels us, and by His righteousness, He protects us. The Christian life is one of learning to swim in this new reality, navigating the deep with the confidence that we belong to Him who is Lord of the seas, and who has made us clean, once and for all.