Deuteronomy 14:1-21

Easy-to-Read Version

Israel, God’s Special People

14 “You are the children of the Lord your God. When someone dies, you must not cut yourselves or shave your heads^[a] to show your sadness. ² This is because you are different from other people. You belong to the Lord your God. From all the people in the world, the Lord chose you to be his own special people.

Food the Israelites Are Allowed to Eat

³ “Don’t eat anything that the Lord hates. ⁴ You may eat these animals: cattle, sheep, goats, ⁵ deer, gazelles, roe deer, wild sheep, wild goats, antelopes, and mountain sheep. ⁶ You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. ⁷ But don’t eat camels, rabbits, or rock badgers. These animals chew the cud, but they don’t have split hooves. So these animals are not a clean food for you. ⁸ And you must not eat pigs. Their hooves are divided, but they don’t chew the cud. So pigs are not a clean food for you. Don’t eat any meat from pigs. Don’t even touch a pig’s dead body.

⁹ “You may eat any kind of fish that has fins and scales. ¹⁰ But don’t eat anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales. It is not a clean food for you.

¹¹ “You may eat any clean bird. ¹² But don’t eat any of these birds: eagles, vultures, buzzards, ¹³ red kites, falcons, any kind of kite, ¹⁴ any kind of raven, ¹⁵ horned owls, screech owls, sea gulls, any kind of hawk, ¹⁶ little owls, great owls, white owls, ¹⁷ desert owls, ospreys, cormorants, ¹⁸ storks, any kind of heron, hoopoes, or bats.

¹⁹ “All insects with wings are unclean, so don’t eat them. ²⁰ But you may eat any clean bird.

²¹ “Don’t eat any animal that has died by itself. You may give the dead animal to the foreigner in your town, and he can eat it. Or you may sell the dead animal to a foreigner. But you yourselves must not eat the dead animal, because you belong to the Lord your God. You are his special people.

“Don’t cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk.