Attributed commentary excerpt
John Gill's Exposition on Leviticus 11:7
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Exposition of the Old and New Testament
John Gill (1697–1771) · 18th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, etc.] Not only its hoofs are parted, but cloven quite through, and so in this respect answers Moses’s first descriptive character of clean creatures; though Aristotle f234 and Pliny f235 speak of some kind of swine in Illyricum, Paeonia, and other places, which have solid hoofs; but perhaps these were not properly swine, though so called: yet he cheweth not the cud; and a learned physician observes f236, that such creatures that chew not the cud, so perfect a chyle cannot be elaborated by them as is by those that chew the cud, and therefore their flesh must be less wholesome; and of the swine, he says f237, they have but one belly, and so there is no rumination or chewing the cud by them; wherefore they are to be placed, and are in a lower degree than the camel, the coney, and the hare; and as they cannot digest the chyle so well as those that chew the cud, and also live upon most sordid and filthy food, the eating of swine’s flesh, he observes, must produce many inconveniences to the body, as especially scorbutic, arthritic, scabious, and leprous disorders: so Manetho the Egyptian says f238, that he that eats swine’s milk is liable to be filled with the leprosy; and Maimonides f239 gives it as the principal reason of its being forbid the Jews, because it is such a filthy creature, and eats such filthy things: he [is] unclean to you: and so it has always been accounted by the Jews, and nothing is more abominable to them, as is even testified by Heathen f240 writers; and in this they have been imitated by many nations, particularly the Egyptians, who, as Herodotus says f241, reckon swine a very filthy creature; so that if anyone does but touch it passing by, he is obliged to plunge himself into a river with his clothes on; and keepers of them may not go into any of their temples, nor do the rest of the Egyptians intermarry with them, but they marry among themselves; the reason of this their abhorrence of swine, Aelianus says f242, is because they are so gluttonous that they will not spare their own young, nor abstain from human flesh; and this, says he, is the reason why the Egyptians hate it as an impure and voracious animal: likewise the Arabians entirely abstain from swine’s flesh, as Solinus says f243, who adds, that if any of this sort of creatures is carried into Arabia, it immediately dies; and the same Pliny f244 attests: and so the Phoenicians, the near neighbours of the Jews, would not eat the flesh of them; hence Antoninus is said to abstain from it after the manner of the Phoenicians f245 , unless the historian should mean the Jews; also the GalloGrecians or Galatians f246; nay, even the Indians have such an abhorrence of it, that they would as soon taste of human flesh as taste of that f247, and it is well known that the Mahometans abstain from it; and they have such an aversion to it, that if any chance to kill a wild pig, for tame they have none, they look on the merit of it to be almost equivalent to the killing a Christian in fight f248: now these creatures may be an emblem of filthy and impure sinners, especially apostates, who return to their former impurities and wallow in them, (<610222>2 Peter 2:22).
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