The Grammar of Holiness: Unclean Flyers Text: Leviticus 11:13-19
Introduction: God's Audiovisual Aids
We come now to a portion of Scripture that causes many modern Christians to quietly shuffle their feet. We are comfortable with the grand narrative of redemption, with the cross, with the resurrection. We are even, for the most part, comfortable with the thunder of the moral law from Sinai. But when we get to lists of prohibited birds, our eyes tend to glaze over. We are tempted to file this under "Old Testament curiosities" and move swiftly on to the bits we think are more relevant.
But this is a grave mistake. The God who said "Thou shalt not murder" is the same God who said "Thou shalt not eat the eagle." To dismiss these laws as arbitrary or merely hygienic is to miss the pedagogical genius of God. We must understand that the ceremonial law was a vast, intricate, and glorious audiovisual aid. For centuries, God was teaching His people, who were a "church under age," the fundamental grammar of reality. He was teaching them the difference between holy and profane, clean and unclean, life and death. He was catechizing them not just with words, but with their dinner plates. Every meal was a theology lesson.
These laws were never about earning salvation. They were about illustrating it. They were a schoolmaster, a tutor, designed to lead Israel to Christ. They were shadows, and Christ is the substance. Now that the substance has come, we are no longer bound to the shadows. Jesus has declared all foods clean. But this does not mean the shadows have nothing to teach us. A man who has arrived at his destination does not burn the map; he can still look at it to understand the road he traveled. By studying these distinctions, we learn about the nature of the holiness that is now ours in Christ, a holiness that must still distinguish between the light and the darkness, between the way of life and the way of death.
This list of unclean birds is not a random assortment. There are profound theological principles at work, principles that reveal God's hatred of violence, death, darkness, and confusion. He is teaching His people to be a people of life, light, and order, set apart from the pagan nations around them who worshiped the very things these birds represented.
The Text
‘These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, and the kite and the falcon in its kind, every raven in its kind, and the ostrich and the owl and the gull and the hawk in its kind, and the little owl and the cormorant and the great owl, and the white owl and the pelican and the carrion vulture, and the stork, the heron in its kinds, and the hoopoe, and the bat.
(Leviticus 11:13-19 LSB)
Detestable Things (v. 13)
The Lord begins with a strong command:
"‘These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable..." (Leviticus 11:13)
The language here is potent. The word is not simply "avoid" or "do not eat." It is "detest." This is a matter of the heart, a matter of affections. God is commanding an emotional and spiritual revulsion. He is training their appetites, both physical and spiritual. This is not about personal taste, as though some Israelites just did not care for falconry. This is a divinely mandated abomination. They were to look at these creatures, not as dinner, but as a living symbol of that which is contrary to the holiness of God.
This is a crucial lesson for us. Sanctification is not just about behavior modification; it is about the transformation of our desires. We are not just to stop sinning; we are to learn to hate our sin. We are to detest the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil. God is teaching Israel, through their diet, that holiness involves a rightly ordered set of loves and hatreds. You cannot be neutral about the things God calls detestable and still claim to be walking in His ways.
Birds of Prey and Death (v. 13-15)
The first category of birds is largely made up of predators and scavengers.
"...the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, and the kite and the falcon in its kind, every raven in its kind..." (Leviticus 11:13-15 LSB)
What do these birds have in common? They live by violence and bloodshed. They are hunters. The eagle, the falcon, the hawk, they are magnificent creatures, but their way of life is red in tooth and claw. The vulture, the buzzard, the raven, they are nature's clean-up crew, but they thrive on death. They feast on carrion, on the dead and decaying.
God is teaching His people a fundamental principle: you are what you eat. To eat a bird of prey is to symbolically partake in its predatory nature. To eat a scavenger is to have fellowship with death and decay. The life of the flesh is in the blood, and that blood was to be brought to the altar as a substitute for the sinner. It was sacred. These birds, by their very nature, profane the blood. They spill it violently or consume it in rotting flesh.
Israel was to be a nation that lived by the grace of God, not by preying on the weak. Their sustenance was to come from God's hand, through the grain from the field and the clean herd from the flock, not through violence and death. This was a constant, sacramental reminder that they were not to be like the pagan empires around them, the eagles and lions of the world who built their kingdoms through conquest and bloodshed. They were to be a kingdom of priests, serving the God of life.
Creatures of the Night and the Fringe (v. 16-18)
The next group includes birds known for their nocturnal habits or their association with desolate places.
"...and the ostrich and the owl and the gull and the hawk in its kind, and the little owl and the cormorant and the great owl, and the white owl and the pelican and the carrion vulture..." (Leviticus 11:16-18 LSB)
Here we find a menagerie of owls. The owl is a classic symbol of the night. It operates in darkness. God's first creative act was "Let there be light." His people are to be children of the light, children of the day. To eat a creature of the night is to identify with the darkness. The Scriptures consistently associate darkness with sin, ignorance, and judgment. Israel was to have nothing to do with these things.
Then we have birds like the gull, the cormorant, and the pelican. These are birds of the shoreline, the boundary between land and sea. In the ordered world of Genesis, God carefully separated the waters from the dry land. Creatures that live on this boundary, that blur the lines of God's ordered domains, are symbolically unclean. They represent a kind of creational confusion. Holiness, remember, is about separation and distinction. These birds inhabit the in-between places, the margins. Israel was not to be a marginal people; they were to be squarely in the center of God's will.
The ostrich is an interesting case. It is a bird that does not fly, blurring the category of "bird." It is also associated in Scripture with the wilderness and forgotten places (Isaiah 34:13). God was calling His people to be a fruitful, settled people in a garden land, not wanderers in the desolate waste.
Blurring the Boundaries (v. 19)
The list concludes with more creatures that defy simple categorization.
"...and the stork, the heron in its kinds, and the hoopoe, and the bat." (Genesis 11:19 LSB)
The stork and heron are, again, birds of the marshlands, the boundary-blurring creatures. But the final entry is perhaps the most instructive: the bat. The bat is listed here among the birds, the "flying things." But we know it is a mammal. It has fur and teeth and nurses its young. It is a creature of the air that is not a bird. It is a creature of the twilight, the boundary between day and night. It is the quintessential hybrid, a living embodiment of category confusion.
This is profoundly important. The essence of paganism is the worship of the creature rather than the Creator, and this always leads to the blurring of created distinctions. It leads to men lying with men, women with women, and in its darkest forms, men with beasts. It is an attempt to de-create, to return the world to the "formless and void" state. By forbidding the eating of these hybrid or boundary-crossing creatures, God was teaching Israel to honor the created order. He was teaching them to respect the lines He had drawn in the world, which was a necessary prerequisite for respecting the moral lines He had drawn for their lives.
Christ, Our Cleanliness
So what does a 21st-century Christian do with a list of unclean birds? Do we picket zoos? Do we look with suspicion on our bird-watching neighbors? Of course not. To do so would be to remain in the shadows now that the Son has risen.
We must see that all these symbols point to Christ. He is the ultimate fulfillment of all these laws. The birds of prey pointed to the violence and bloodshed of a fallen world. Christ entered that world and absorbed all its violence on the cross, bringing peace by the blood of His cross. The scavengers pointed to the curse of death and decay. Christ entered the tomb, the very belly of decay, and shattered the power of death forever through His resurrection. He is the God of life.
The creatures of the night pointed to the darkness of sin and ignorance. Christ came as the Light of the World, and those who follow Him do not walk in darkness. The creatures who blurred the boundaries pointed to the chaos of a world in rebellion against its Creator's design. Christ, the divine Logos, is the one through whom and for whom the entire created order was made. In Him, all things hold together. He does not blur categories; He fulfills them. He is the true King, the true Priest, the true Man.
Because Jesus has come, the wall of separation, which these dietary laws helped to build between Jew and Gentile, has been torn down. In Peter's vision on the rooftop, God lowered a sheet filled with all kinds of unclean animals and told him to "Rise, kill and eat." This was not fundamentally a lesson about lunch. It was a lesson about fellowship. God was cleansing the Gentiles, and the dietary laws, which had served their purpose as a temporary barrier, were now set aside. The new law of food is the law of love and hospitality. "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17).
Therefore, we are free to eat whatever we like, with thanksgiving to God. But the principles behind the shadows remain. We are still called to detest evil. We are still called to reject the way of violence and predation in our dealings with others. We are still called to walk as children of the Light. And we are still called to honor the created order of God, celebrating the glorious distinction between male and female, and all the other boundaries He has established for our good. The audiovisual aids have been retired, but the lesson of holiness remains, a lesson that is now written on our hearts by the Spirit of God.