creature for the camel as the " ship of the desert" that to eat him, especially where many other creatures give meat much preferable, would be the worst economy possible in an Eastern commissariat — that of destroy- ing- the best, or rather tlie only, conveyance in order to obtain the most iiulilferent food. The liare was long supposed, even by eminent naturalists, to rumi- nate, and certaiidy was eaten by the Egyptians. The horse and the ass would be generally spared from similar reasons to those which exempted the camel. As re- gards other cattle, tlie yoinig males would be those uni- versally preferred for food, no more of that sex reach- ing maturity than were needful for breeding, wliile the supply of milk suggested the copious preservation of the female. The duties of draught would require an- other rule in rearing neat-cattle. The laboring steer, man's fellow in the field, had a life somewhat ennobled and sanctilied by tliat comra<leship. Tims it seems to have been quite unusual to sla\' for sacrifice or food, as in 1 Kings xix, 21, the ox accustomed to the yoke. And perhaps, in this case, as being tougher, the flesh was not roasted, but boiled. The case of Araunali's oxen is not similar, as cattle of all ages were useful in the tlireshing-tloor (2 Sam. xxiv, 22). Many of tiiese restrictions must be esteemed as merely based on usage, or arbitrary. Practically, the law left among tlie al- lowed meats an am|>le variety, and no inconvenience was likely to arise from a proliibition to eat camels, horses, and asses. Swine, hares, etc., would |)robably, as nearl}^ as possible, be exterminated in proiiortion as tlie law was observed, and their economic room filled by other creatures. Wunderbar {Bibriach-talm. Medi- ciii, ii, 50) refers to a notion that •' the animal element might only with great circumspection and discretion be taken up into tiie life of man in order to avoid de- basing tliat human life by assimilation to a brutal level, so that thereby the soul might become degraded, pro- faned, lilled with animal affections, and disqualilied for drawing near to God." He thinks, also, that we may notice a meaning in '• the distinction between creatures of a higher, nobler, and less intensely animal organiza- tion as clean and tliose of a lower and incomplete or- ganization as unclean," and that the insects provided with four legs and two others for leaping are of a high- er or more complete type than others, and relatively nearer to man. This seems fanciful, but may, never- theless, have been a view current among IJabbiuical authorities. As regards birds, the raptures have com- monly tough and indigestible flesh, and some of them are, in all warm countries, the natural scavengers of all sorts of carrion and olTal. This alone begets an instinc- tive re|iugnance towards them, and associates them with what was beforehand a defilement. Thus to kill them for food would tend to midtiply various sources of un- cleamiess. Porphyry (Absliii. iv, 7, quoted by Winer) says that the Egyptian priests abstained from all fish, from all quadrupeds witli solid hoofs, or having claws, or which were not horne(i, and from all carnivorous birds. Other curious parallels have been found among more distant nations. See Animal.
But as Orientals have miiuls sensitive to teaching by types, there can be little doubt that such ceremonial distinctions not only tended to keep Jew and Gentile apart, but were a perpetual reminder to the former tliat he and the latter were not on one level before Ood. Hence, when that economy was changed, we find that tliis was the very symbol selected to instruct Peter in the truth that God was not a '• respecter of persons." The vessel filled with '-fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air," was expressive of the Gentile world, to be put now on a level with the Israelite, tlirough God's " purifying their hearts by faith." A sense of this, their preroga- tive, however dimly held, may have fortified the mem- bers of the privileged nation in their struggle with the persecutions of the Gentiles on this very point. It was no mere question of which among several means of sup-
porting life a man chose to adopt, when the persecutor dictated the alternative of swine's flesh or the loss of life itself; but whether he shoukl surrender the badge and type of that privilege by which Israel stood as the favored nation l)efore God (1 Mace. i,(j3, G4; 2 Mace, vi, 18; vii, 1). The same feeling led to the exaggeration of the Mosaic regulations, until it was " unlawful for a man that was a Jew to keeji comiiany with, or come unto, one of another nation" (Acts x, 28 j ; and witli such intensity were badges of distinction cherished that the wine, bread, oil, cheese, or anything cooked by a hea- then was declared unlawful for a Jew to eat. Nor was this strictness, however it might at times be pushed to an absurdity, without foundation in the nature of the case. The Jews, as, during and after the return from captivity, they found the avenues of the world opening around them, would find their intercourse with Gentiles unavoidably increased, and their only way to avoid an utter relaxation of their code would lie in somewhat overstraining the precepts of prohibition. Nor should we omit tlie tendency of those who have no scruples to "despise" those who have, and to parade their liberty at the ex|)ense of these latter, and give piquancy to the contrast by wanton tricks, designed to beguile the Jew from liis strictness of observance, and make liiin, nii- guartledly, partake of wliat he abhorred, in order to heighten his confusion by derision. One or two in- stances of such amusement at the Jew's expense would drive the latter within the intrenchmeiits of a univer- sal repugnance and avoidance, and make him seek the safe side at the cost of being counted a churl and a big- ot. Thus we may account for the refusal of the " king's meat" by the religious captives (Dan. i, 8), and tor the similar conduct recorded of Judith (xii, 2) anil Tobit (Tob. i, 11); and in a similar spirit Shakspeare makes Shylock say, "I will not eat with you, drink with you. nor pra\' with you" (Merchant of Venice, act i, sc. iii). As regards things offered to idols, all who own one God meet on common ground; but the Jew viewed the pre- cept as demanding a literal objective obedience, and had a holy horror of even an unconscious infraction of the law : hence, as he could never know what had re- ceived idolatrous consecration, his only safety lay in to- tal abstinence; whereas Paul adinonishes the Christian to abstain, "for his sake that showed it and for con- science' sake," from a thing said to have been consecrat- ed to a false god, but not to parade his conscientious scruples by interrogating the butcher at his stall, or the host in his guest-chamber (1 Cor. x, 25-29) ; and to give opposite injunctions would doubtless, in his view, have been "compelling the Gentiles to live as did the Jews" {lovSai'CeLv, Gal. ii, 14). See Ai>isgema.