God spoke to Moses and Aaron: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, Of all the animals on Earth, these are the animals that you may eat:

“You may eat any animal that has a split hoof, divided in two, and that chews the cud, but not an animal that only chews the cud or only has a split hoof. For instance, the camel chews the cud but doesn’t have a split hoof, so it’s unclean. The rock badger chews the cud but doesn’t have a split hoof and so it’s unclean. The rabbit chews the cud but doesn’t have a split hoof so is unclean. The pig has a split hoof, divided in two, but doesn’t chew the cud and so is unclean. You may not eat their meat nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.

“Among the creatures that live in the water of the seas and streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales. But anything that doesn’t have fins and scales, whether in seas or streams, whether small creatures in the shallows or huge creatures in the deeps, you are to detest. Yes, detest them. Don’t eat their meat; detest their carcasses. Anything living in the water that doesn’t have fins and scales is detestable to you.” (Leviticus 11:1-12)

You are what you eat. God loved his people, and so his purpose in giving them the dietary restrictions was not to make their lives less fulfilled or more difficult than they otherwise might be. Yet, when we get to the New Testament, those dietary restrictions were not imposed on the non-Jewish people who were coming to Jesus. So if there were some health benefits or protections associated with the food restrictions and if that had been their purpose, then freeing the Gentiles from the restrictions might be taken to mean that God didn’t love Gentiles as much as he loved the Jewish people. So health probably has nothing to do with it.

Why then were the Israelites allowed to eat some animals but not others? Why such detailed specifics and lists regarding so many different sorts of creatures? God’s purpose was relational. The two major sections of the Pentateuch that elaborate the dietary restrictions are introduced or concluded with the statement that Israel was to be a “holy people of God” and that they were to “be holy because God was holy.” They were not to render themselves unclean by what they ate.

Just as the prophets of God had to act out their prophetic messages—as when Hosea married a prostitute, Ezekiel cooked bad bread over cow dung, or Isaiah ran about naked—so the people of Israel illustrated to themselves and to their neighbors their relationship with God. God had told them that every aspect of their lives should be in the presence of God: when they got up, when they went to sleep, when they walked along the road and went about their day, God was always to be with them. Even in what they ate, they couldn’t get away from God’s presence in their lives. There was never supposed to be a moment when they didn’t feel God’s presence. After Pentecost, however, God began living inside his people. The external reminders of God were therefore no longer necessary. God is always with us now.

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