In this section, Moses reiterates the dietary laws for the people of Israel - which meats were considered to be clean, which were unclean. These kosher laws served the people of Israel well not only in Moses’ generation, but for centuries to come . . .

In the Middle Ages, when plagues and disease devastated the continent of Europe, the Jewish people were singularly protected from many of them. Mistakenly thinking their protection came from magic or witchcraft, the Jews were persecuted. As time has passed, however, we now know that the reason the Jewish people in Europe were protected was because of their adherence to the sanitary and dietary regulations found throughout the book of Deuteronomy.

The wisdom of God’s Word becomes all the more clear in light of the contemporary writings of other cultures. For example, an Egyptian scroll, written at approximately the same time Moses wrote Deuteronomy, is said to have propagated the following: To prevent gray hair, take blood from a black cat, mix it with the fat of a rattlesnake and eat it twice daily. Or to reverse baldness, take fat from a cat, a horse, a crocodile, a hippo, a snake, and an ibex and mix it together and eat it. If you have a severe case of baldness, add to it a tooth of a donkey that has been cooked in honey.

When we read these things, we chuckle because of the absurdity. But when we study the Scriptures, written at the same time as this papyrus, we see them proving to be medically correct and healthy. They are not dated, not absurd - and should the Lord tarry, I have a sneaking suspicion that as we learn more, we’ll discover to a greater degree how God’s dietary regulations are the best possible plan for the human condition.

When Jesus came on the scene, He said, “The issue is not what you eat physically, but what goes on in your heart” (see Mark 7:15). With this in mind, we can understand that these laws are not only to be followed by the Jewish people of Moses’ day, but that they’re applicable for you and me spiritually - that we might be careful what we take in, what we put into our soul.