Commentaria in Leviticum
Among birds the thrush, if any contend, I being judge; among quadrupeds the first glory goes to the hare.
Tropologically, by these four animals are signified four vices, contrary to the four cardinal virtues. First, the humpbacked camel is a symbol of the proud man and of pride, which is contrary to prudence and wisdom. For true wisdom is humble; on the other hand the camel is humpbacked and stolid. The fable is well known: the camel asked of Jove to be armed with horns; he, laughing at its foolish prayers, even cropped its ears, so that it should thenceforth be not only unarmed but also deformed. Secondly, the timid hare signifies sloth and pusillanimity, which is repugnant to fortitude and constancy. Thirdly, the choerogryllus, which lays waste and feeds off other men’s fields, signifies injustice, contrary to justice. Fourthly, the filthy sow signifies gluttony and lust, which are opposed to temperance: with the carcasses of these, that is, with evil external actions, it is not lawful even to communicate. So Hesychius.
Verse 7. And the swine (is unclean), which, though it divideth the hoof, cheweth not the cud.—By swine take pig, both male and female; for this is the Hebrew chazir: for all swine’s flesh was forbidden to the Jews, whence even now the Jews abstain from all pork. In like manner sus in Priscian and the Latins is of common gender, and signifies both boar and sow; hence that of Virgil, Georgics, book 3:
He himself rushes on, and the Sabellian boar whets his tusks.
Ridiculously, some in St. Polycarp, epistle to the Philippians, have thought the eating of swine here forbidden because the swine, when it eats, so devours that it does not know its master, and because when hungry it utters a grunt to its master: for this is the nature and natural music of swine. A truer cause is given by Cicero, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods: “The swine,” he says, “what has it besides food? to which, lest it putrefy, Chrysippus says a soul was given instead of salt.” Hence that holy Abbot, in the Lives of the Fathers, book 6, chapter 1, number 8: “As the eyes of a pig,” he says, “are always bent to the ground, so the soul fallen into pleasure and the mire of luxury can scarcely look back to heaven or savour anything worthy of God.” Moreover Plutarch errs, book 5 of the Symposiacs, Question 5, where he teaches that the Jews abstain from swine’s flesh out of reverence; for they revere the swine, because the swine was the teacher of sowing and ploughing, especially in Egypt: for the swine, rooting up the earth with its snout, impressed the track of ploughing and showed the work of the ploughshare. Likewise he errs when he says that the Jews abstain from the hare, “because, led by emulation of the Egyptians, they reckon the swiftness of the hare divine, and likewise the subtlety of its organs of sense. For the eyes of hares are so tireless that they sleep even with them open. In swiftness of sight they seem to surpass the rest; led by admiration of which the Egyptians in their sacred letters signify hearing by a painted hare.” A more probable cause is that which he subjoins: “The Jews abominate swine’s flesh because they abhor vitiligo and leprosy, which they think are contracted by eating this flesh.” Others have thought the pig unclean because it roots up the earth, and so overturns seeds and harvest; for which cause the Romans immolated a pig to Ceres in the month of April, with lamps and torches kindled, in white garments. Hear Ovid:
The sow is thought the first victim to have deserved to die, because with her snout she dug up the sown seeds and cut off the hope of the year.
Ceres first rejoiced in the blood of the pregnant sow, avenging her wealth by the deserved slaughter of the guilty.
Finally, the Emperor Hadrian, to drive the Jews from their city, carved a swine at Jerusalem, and named the city Aelia after his own name. Hear Eusebius in the Chronology: “It was built by Aelius Hadrian, and on the front of its gate by which we go out to Bethlehem a swine is carved in marble, signifying that the Jews are subject to the Roman power”; so that by this image, as by a title, he signified that the Jews were forbidden their own city and native soil, and that Jerusalem was now not Jewish but Gentile and Roman: for the Romans bore the pig on their standards on account of the broken strength of the mind, as Festus witnesses at the word porcus. Wherefore the Jews besought Vitellius, going against the Arabs, not to lead through Judea the camp and standards marked with the image of a pig, as Josephus witnesses, book 5 of the Jewish War, chapter 1. Finally, by this carving of a pig he signified that the Jews are the most wicked of men. For, as Horus says, and from him Pierius, Hieroglyphics 9, the pig is a symbol of men despising truth, profane, pernicious, and those who are utterly turned away from God. So Baronius, in the year of Christ 137.
Verse 8. Of their flesh you shall not eat, nor touch their carcasses.—Hence they could not even take out their fat, nor use it; it was otherwise with clean animals; for it was lawful to slay these, and to touch them when slain, and to take the fat from them and use it, unless they were carcasses that had died of themselves, or had been long slain, or torn by a beast: for then these also were unclean and forbidden.
Verse 9. Whatsoever hath fins and scales, as well in the sea as in the rivers and the pools, you shall eat.—For “fins” the Royal Bible reads “little wings”; whence the Septuagint also render pterygia, that is, wings; Tertullian, book On Jewish Meats, reads “oars”; all this comes to the same: for fishes that have fins carry them as little wings and pinions, that they may swim with them and poise themselves in the waters, as birds in the air. That fishes, then, may be clean, which it is lawful to eat, they must have two things: first fins, secondly scales, which cover almost the whole body; if either be wanting they are reckoned unclean: for fishes lacking fins or scales, as eels, are too moist, slimy and unwholesome; for scales and fins are marks of dryness. Hence the flesh of these is denser, whiter and healthier; and therefore such are reckoned clean: for fishes abound in humidity, and this easily harms the stomach and the human body;
hence when preserved with salt or dried they are healthier than fresh. Tropologically, scales signify gravity of manners and firmness of good conversation in the midst of the world; fins signify senses thinking on high things. For fishes that have fins are wont to leap above the waters, says St. Gregory. They therefore have scales who, fortified with the rigour of virtue, admit no appetite for worldly occupation; but they have fins who from time to time seek the secret of contemplation, and float above the waves of worldly cares, and who know how to rise by leaps of the mind to things above, that the breeze of supreme love, as of free air, may touch them, says St. Gregory, book 5 of the Morals, chapter 6, Radulphus, Bede, Cyril, book 9 Against Julian, near the end, and Tertullian, or rather Novatian, book On Jewish Meats.
Verses 10 and 11. But all that hath not fins and scales shall be an abomination to you, and detestable—unclean and foetid. Wherefore the Jews sinned who did otherwise, not because the animal was unclean, but because disobedience polluted the mind, which guilt was not expiated by external lustration: for by it only legal and bodily uncleanness was washed away, but this guilt by contrition and penance. Hence the Machabees chose to suffer the most cruel deaths and undergo the gravest martyrdom rather than eat the swine’s flesh here forbidden, 2 Machabees 7. Hence also St. Peter so shrank from the same as to say, Acts 10:14: “Never did I eat any thing that is common and unclean.”
Verse 13. These are the birds which you must not eat, and which are to be avoided by you: the eagle, and the griffon, and the osprey.—Moses dealt first with clean and unclean quadrupeds, verse 3; secondly with fishes, verse 9; thirdly he here deals with birds. These species of birds the Hebrews render from the Hebrew otherwise and variously; but with our Interpreter, both here and in Deuteronomy 14:12, the Chaldee and the Septuagint agree in all things, except that for the bittern the Septuagint substitute the pelican, of which in verse 18.
The eagle is unclean, because it is a bird fighting and rapacious against other birds. Hence Cicero, hearing that Pompey had fled in the battle of Pharsalia, when Nonius said that seven eagles still remained, and therefore there was good hope, said: “You would counsel rightly if we had to fight against jackdaws; but now Caesar is the enemy and the conqueror.” So Plutarch in the Life of Cicero. The eagle therefore is forbidden to the Jews, because, as Isidore says, “he who hates the eagle, the kite and the hawk, hates robbers and those who live by crime.” Hence St. Augustine on Psalm 123 teaches that the eagle is a symbol of the demon: for he is the plunderer of souls, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Again, Nabuchodonosor and like tyrants are called an eagle, as I shall say on Deuteronomy 28:49.