Deuteronomy 14 - Introduction

Inserted Laws on Rites for the Dead, Foods Clean and Unclean, etc.

Between two laws, which forbid to Israel, as holy to Jehovah, certain rites of mourning for the dead, Deuteronomy 14:1 f., and the eating of what has died a natural death (with an appendix against seething a kid in its mother's milk), Deuteronomy 14:21 both of which contain deuteronomic phrases there lies a passage, Deuteronomy 14:3, on clean and unclean foods, in which the language is not deuteronomic, but has phrases peculiar to P. The first law against the mourning customs cannot be earlier than the end of the 7th century when these customs were not only practised in Israel but regarded as sanctioned. Further there are no parallels to these laws in JE, except to Deuteronomy 14:21, but there are parallels to all the rest in the late legislation of P (or H): Leviticus 11:2-23; Leviticus 20:25. Again the form of address is, unlike the laws in 13 and Deuteronomy 14:22 ff., throughout in the Pl., save only for the deuteronomic phrases in Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 14:21. All this is reasonable ground for taking the whole section as a later (exilic or post-exilic) addition to the code of D (with the possible exceptions of Deuteronomy 14:3; Deuteronomy 14:21which may be fragments of the original D). Note that there is no reference to such laws in the reforms of Josiah. The relations of this section to its parallel in Leviticus 11:2-23 are uncertain. Lev. does not contain the list of clean beasts which our form of the law gives, Deuteronomy 14:4, but otherwise is more elaborate and detailed. Probably neither is derived from the other, but both are developments from a common origin. Further the LXX version of our law varies from the Heb. Altogether then we have here another instance of the currency of various editions of the same law, tending to grow in different ways.