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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 14

1 You are children of the Lord your God.⁠ Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead.⁠ 2 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth.⁠ 3 You must not eat any forbidden thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the ibex, the gazelle, the deer, the wild goat, the antelope, the wild oryx, and the mountain sheep. 6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. 7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you.) 8 Also, the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. 9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you. 11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah after its species, 14 every raven after its species, 15 the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, the falcon after its species, 16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl, 17 the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, and the bat. 19 And any swarming winged thing is impure to you—they may not be eaten. 20 You may eat any winged creature that is clean. 21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.⁠ 22 You must be certain to tithe all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year. 23 In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place he chooses to locate his name, you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. 24 When he blesses you, if the place where he chooses to locate his name is distant, 25 you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself. 26 Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it. 27 As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you. 28 At the end of every three years you must bring all the tithe of your produce, in that very year, and you must store it up in your villages. 29 Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Leviticus 19:28 and Deuteronomy 14:1

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Leviticus 19 forbids ritually cutting the body in mourning for the dead, stated directly. Deuteronomy 14 repeats the ban on cutting yourself for the dead but adds a reason, calling Israel God’s children and a people holy and chosen.

Passages

Leviticus 19:28

Hebrew Bible
27 You must not round off the corners of the hair on your head or ruin the corners of your beard. 28 You must not slash your body for a dead person or incise a tattoo on yourself. I am the Lord. 29 Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, so that the land does not practice prostitution and become full of lewdness.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Leviticus

Deuteronomy 14:1

Hebrew Bible
1 You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead. 2 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth. 3 You must not eat any forbidden thing.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

... In Leviticus 21:5, it is the priests who are forbidden to shave their heads and make gashes in their flesh on the occasion of the death of anyone other than a close relative precisely because priests are forbidden in Leviticus 21:4 to observe rites of mourning for anyone other than a close relative. Leviticus 19:26-28, on the other hand, enjoins all Israelites to refrain from shaving their heads and making gashes in their flesh as mourning rites. Deuteronomy 14:1-2 likewise forbids all Israelites to gash themselves or shave the front of their heads as rites of mourning. What is intriguing is that, when Jeremiah asserts in Jeremiah 16:5-6 that there will be an ad hoc suspension of the accepted mourning rites of gash and tonsure, he specifically employs the terminology of Deuteronomy 14:2 and reflects Deuteronomy but assumes that what Deuteronomy 14:1-2 forbids is, in fact, normal and proper behavior in the time of mourning except when the suspension of mourning itself is a form of God-given punishment. ...
Mayer I. Gruber, “Jeremiah 3:1–4:2 between Deuteronomy 24 and Matthew 5: Jeremiah’s Exercise in Ethical Criticism,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Chaim Cohen, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Yochanan Muffs, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Jeffrey H. Tigay (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 235.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Leviticus 19:28 and Deuteronomy 14:1

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