Leviticus — Chapter 11

The distinction of clean and unclean animals (Lev. 11) was ordained for four reasons, Lapide teaches following Eleazar the priest, Tertullian (lib. de Cibis Judaicis), Origen, and Augustine. First, to exercise the rude people in temperance and obedience. Second, to keep Israel from the pollution of Gentile idolatrous feasts. Third, to prepare them for Christ who was to come, forming them in purity of body as figure of purity of soul. Fourth and most important: the unclean animals were symbols of vices, from which the clean animals called men to turn away.

The rule for clean land animals — divided hoof and rumination — carries a precise tropological meaning. Lapide follows St. Gregory (in Cant. 7) and Radulphus: to ruminate is the symbol of prudence, for the prudent man receives the word of God into the stomach of memory and calls it back to the mouth of the heart for frequent meditation, chewing it over again. To divide the hoof signifies the ability to distinguish good from evil in one's actions. Both are required for sanctity: meditating the word of God and performing it in deed.

The swine is unclean because, though it divides the hoof, it does not chew the cud. Lapide cites the famous monastic saying: the eyes of the pig always look to the earth; so the soul that has fallen into pleasures and the filth of lust can scarcely look up to God or conceive anything worthy of Him. Tropologically, the swine represents gluttony and lust, which oppose the virtue of temperance.

The sign of clean fish — those having fins and scales (Lev. 11:9-12) — bears a tropological sense. Lapide follows Isychius: scales signify gravity of morals and firmness of good conduct in the midst of the world's currents; fins signify the senses directed toward heavenly things. Fish with fins can leap above the waters — so the spiritual man lifts himself above worldly concerns by contemplation. Fish without scales — eels, catfish — are immersed in the slime of earthly desires and cannot rise.

The twenty unclean birds include the eagle, vulture, raven, owl, and others. Lapide explains they are forbidden as symbols of vices: the eagle signifies pride; the vulture, avarice and rapacity feeding on carrion; the raven, those who abandon the ark of the Church and do not return (Gen. 8:7); the owl, those who prefer darkness to light; the bat, those who cleave to earthly things, having no spiritual wings. Novatianic (or Tertullian's) detailed tropology in lib. de Cibis Judaicis explains each species as a vice.

The four species of locust permitted for eating (bruchus, attacus, ophiomachus, and the common locust — Lev. 11:21-22) are clean because they leap: their hind legs, longer than their forelegs, elevate them above the earth. Lapide: tropologically, this figures those who, living in the world, yet raise their minds above earthly things by contemplation and aspiration to heaven. The locust that cannot leap — that remains always on the ground — figures the earthly-minded man who never rises to God.

Animals that have the hoof but do not divide it, or do not chew the cud, are unclean; whoever touches their carcasses is unclean until evening (Lev. 11:26-28). Lapide notes that the uncleanness contracted by mere touching was mild — lasting only until evening, cured by bathing. This gradation of legal uncleanness figures the gradation of sin: venial sin is a lesser defilement, cured by prayer and penance; mortal sin requires the full washing of sacramental confession.

Be ye holy, for I am holy. This declaration (Lev. 11:44-45) grounds the laws of clean and unclean not merely in legal observance but in participation in the holiness of God Himself. Lapide notes that the same words return in 1 Peter 1:16, and that their ultimate foundation is the divine nature as the exemplar of created holiness. Thus the dietary laws were never merely hygienic but fundamentally religious and moral in their intent.