Deuteronomy 14 Summary and Study Guide

A chapter that bans eating owls and boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk raises a fair question: what is it doing in a Bible written for people who do neither? This Deuteronomy 14 summary and study guide answers it by starting where Moses starts, with who Israel already was.

Setting the Stage

Deuteronomy 7:6 gave Israel a sentence they would hear again: they were a holy people, chosen by God as His treasured possession above every other nation. There it was the reason to tear down the altars of Canaan.

Two chapters before this one, Moses told them where they could worship, at one place God Himself would choose. In the chapter just before, he told them to put to death anyone who tried to pull them into worshipping other gods, even a brother. Then chapter 14 opens by calling them children, and the same sentence about being a holy people comes back to settle two much smaller questions: how they mourn, and what they eat.

Comprehensive Deuteronomy 14 Summary

Moses tells the new generation who they are before he tells them to do anything. They are children of the LORD their God, a holy people, chosen out of every nation on earth as His own. Because that is true, they are not to grieve the way the nations around them grieve, gashing their bodies or shaving a bare patch on the forehead for the dead.

The same fact governs their food, so Moses runs through the food code again. A land animal has to pass two tests, a split hoof and a chewed cud, so the camel, the hare, the coney and the pig all fail, each by half. A water creature needs fins and scales.

About twenty birds are ruled out by name, and the ones that can still be identified are almost all hunters and scavengers. The insects that fly go with them. An animal that dies on its own may not be eaten, since its blood was never drained, though it may be handed to a resident foreigner or sold to an outsider. A young goat is not to be boiled in its mother’s milk.

Then Moses turns to the harvest. A real tenth of the grain, wine and oil, along with the firstborn animals of flock and herd, is carried to the place God will choose and eaten there in His presence, so that Israel will learn to fear Him.

If the road is too long, the tenth can be sold, the money carried, and food and drink bought at the sanctuary for a feast the whole household shares. The Levite, who owns no land, is not to be left out. And every third year the tenth stays home, so the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow eat until they have had enough, and God blesses the work of Israel’s hands.

One Word Summary

• Belonging: every command in the chapter rests on whose Israel already was.
• Separation: mourning and diet both mark Israel off.
• Table: the second half moves toward a meal, and the chapter ends at one.

In One Sentence

Because Israel belonged to God as His children and His holy people, Moses forbids the mourning rites and foods of the nations and commands a tenth of every harvest to be eaten with joy before God, and every third year given at home to those who own no land.

Theme of Deuteronomy 14

Deuteronomy 14 is about identity deciding behaviour. God states who His people are, and everything He asks of them follows from that one fact rather than from a rule He wants kept for its own sake. Two ideas run alongside it: holiness reaches into ordinary life, into a graveside and a plate, and obedience here is meant to end in gladness. The chapter that forbids the most also commands rejoicing, and it closes with hungry people fed.

Deuteronomy 14 Outline

• Deuteronomy 14:1-2: Moses forbids gashing the body and shaving the forehead for the dead, and gives the reason, that Israel is a holy people God has chosen for Himself.
• Deuteronomy 14:3-5: Moses forbids every unclean food and names ten animals Israel may eat.
• Deuteronomy 14:6-8: The rule of split hoof and chewed cud is given, and the camel, hare, coney and pig fail it.
• Deuteronomy 14:9-10: Water creatures with fins and scales may be eaten, and the rest may not.
• Deuteronomy 14:11-18: Clean birds are permitted, and about twenty kinds are forbidden by name.
• Deuteronomy 14:19-20: Flying creeping things are unclean, and clean flying creatures may be eaten.
• Deuteronomy 14:21: Israel may not eat an animal that dies on its own, and may not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
• Deuteronomy 14:22-23: A tenth of the harvest is eaten before the LORD at the place He chooses, so that Israel will learn to fear Him.
• Deuteronomy 14:24-26: When the distance is too great, the tenth is sold, the money carried, and food and drink bought for a feast at the sanctuary.
• Deuteronomy 14:27: The Levite in the town is not to be neglected, because he has no inheritance.
• Deuteronomy 14:28-29: Every third year the tenth is stored at home for the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, with a promise of blessing.

The List of Clean and Unclean Creatures

The list restates the food code of Leviticus 11 for a generation about to farm and herd in Canaan. Leviticus works by naming the exceptions; here Moses names the animals Israel may eat, then the ones they may not. Archaeologists have noted that pig bones are almost absent from Iron Age Israelite settlement layers while they are common in nearby Philistine ones, which suggests the rule in verse 8 was widely kept.

Observations from Deuteronomy 14

One Sentence Holds the Food Laws Together (14:2, 14:21)

“For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God” stands at the head of the food laws and again at the foot of them. Israel belonged to God, set apart for Him. So Israel never had to work out from the animals themselves why the rules existed. The reason was handed to them twice.

God Gives a Test for Beasts and Fish, and Only a List for Birds (14:6, 14:9, 14:11-18)

The land rule and the water rule are both things a farmer could check by looking. For birds no test is given at all, only names. Where Israel could see the reason they were given it, and where they could not, they were left with God’s word and nothing else, which is the same obedience the chapter has asked for since verse one.

The Levite’s Reason Is Given Twice (14:27, 14:29)

Moses says the Levite has no share in the land at verse 27, then says it again inside a bracket two verses later. Saying it twice keeps Israel from treating the tenth as charity toward a man who happened to have less than they did.

The Chapter Begins at a Graveside and Ends at a Full Table (14:1, 14:29)

It opens with a mourner told not to cut himself for the dead. It closes with four people who own no field: the Levite, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. They “shall eat and be satisfied” at a table Israel spreads for them. A man who knows he still has a living Father has somewhere to take his grief, and the chapter ends with him carrying his harvest toward people who have lost what he still has.

Difficult Verses Explained

Does Deuteronomy 14:1 Forbid Tattoos?

The verse forbids two mourning practices, not body art. Moses names gashing the body and shaving the forehead bald over a death, and he ties both to the same phrase, “for the dead.” Leviticus 19:28 is the verse that mentions marks in the skin, and it sits in the same setting of grief. Moses is answering what those two acts meant.

Among the nations around Israel they belonged to the rites of the dead, and scholars of the ancient Near East hold that they were understood to tie the living to the one they had buried. Israel was told to take its grief to a living Father instead. Whatever a Christian concludes about tattoos, the argument has to be made from somewhere other than this verse.

Why Could a Foreigner Eat What Israel Could Not (14:21)?

Because the restriction was about covenant rather than about the meat being harmful. An animal found dead could be handed to a foreigner living in an Israelite town or sold to an outsider, and the verse attaches its reason to that permission: “for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God.”

Israel was bound to God by a covenant the foreigner had not entered. Many Bible teachers read this as evidence that the food law was a mark of the covenant rather than a permanent moral rule, since a rule about right and wrong could not be passed along to a neighbour.

Why Must a Young Goat Not Be Boiled in Its Mother’s Milk (14:21)?

Scripture does not say. The command appears three times, at Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26 and here, and never with a reason attached. Two readings are common: texts recovered from the ancient city of Ugarit describe a Canaanite rite that cooked a young goat in milk, so the command may be a refusal to copy it, and others read it as plain mercy, since the milk that fed the animal becomes the broth that cooks it.

The one reason the verse does give is the one it shares with the whole chapter, that Israel was a holy people. This command is also what lies behind the later Jewish practice of keeping meat and dairy apart, though the command itself says nothing about that.

Does Deuteronomy 14:26 Really Allow Strong Drink?

Yes, the verse names strong drink among the things tithe money could buy for a feast before the LORD. “Thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink” tells the Israelite to spend the money on whatever he genuinely wanted, drink included, for a feast eaten in God’s presence.

Scripture is equally plain elsewhere that drunkenness is sin (Proverbs 23:20-21; Ephesians 5:18), and that some people were called to abstain completely, including priests on duty (Leviticus 10:9) and anyone under a Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:3). Both stand together, and this chapter softens neither.

Common Misunderstandings

• That the third-year tithe was a separate third tenth. Verse 28 calls it “all the tithe of thine increase the same year”, which is the same tenth the chapter has been describing, kept at home instead of carried to the sanctuary. Deuteronomy 26:12-15 gives the words an Israelite was to say once he had laid it up.
• That the food laws were given as a health code. Some of them plainly had that effect, since scavengers and animals found dead can carry disease. The reason the chapter itself gives is holiness (14:2), and it never argues from hygiene at any point.
• That the tithe in this chapter was money. It was grain, wine, oil and livestock. Money enters only in verses 24 to 26, and only as a way of moving a harvest too heavy to carry.
• That Deuteronomy 14 covers the sabbatical year and the yearly feasts. Those come in the two chapters that follow, in Deuteronomy 15 and 16.

Christ Connection

The New Testament picks up the very sentence this chapter gives as its reason, and applies it to the church. Israel was chosen, holy, God’s treasured people, and that standing came from what God had done for them rather than from anything they had eaten or refused. The commands followed the standing. The gospel works in the same order, and Titus reaches for the same words.

• A people for God’s own possession (14:2). Titus 2:14 says Christ “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Christ died to buy a people for Himself and make them His own, which is the same claim Moses makes about Israel in verse 2. Peter makes it about the church in 1 Peter 2:9.
• Children of the LORD (14:1). The comfort Moses puts in front of a grieving Israelite becomes the standing of everyone who trusts Christ, since to as many as received Him He gave the right to become the sons of God (John 1:12; 1 John 3:1).
• Mourning that is not despair (14:1). Paul gives the same instruction and the reason Israel did not yet have in full, that believers do not grieve as those who have no hope, because Jesus died and rose again (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).
• Clean and unclean (14:3-21). Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), God told Peter to call nothing common that He had cleansed and then applied it to people rather than menus (Acts 10:15, 28), and Paul calls the food rules “a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17). The rules were the shadow, and Christ is the real thing that cast it.
• The stranger and the alien (14:21, 14:29). Ephesians 2:12-13 puts every Gentile believer roughly where this foreigner stood, far off and outside the covenants of promise. Paul then says the blood of Christ has brought them near, so that Gentile believers are “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:19). They are seated at the table now rather than fed from its edge.
• Money bound in the hand (14:24-26). The permission to sell the tenth and buy again at the sanctuary is the kind of provision the money changers of the temple courts were later serving, and it was that trade Jesus drove out when He said His Father’s house had been made a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12-13).
• The tithe and the Levite (14:22-29). Hebrews 7:5-9 argues that Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham to Melchizedek, so the priesthood this chapter funds is itself under a greater priest, and that priest is Christ.

The chapter also points forward to a table. Israel ate a tenth of its harvest in God’s presence and rejoiced, Jesus promised His disciples they would eat and drink at His table in His kingdom (Luke 22:29-30), and Revelation 19:9 calls the last gathering a supper. What Israel tasted once a year, Christ has secured for His people permanently.

When, Where, and Why

• When: Approximately 1406 BC on the traditional dating, in the fortieth year after Israel left Egypt, on the first day of the eleventh month (Deuteronomy 1:3), weeks before the nation crossed the Jordan.
• Where: The plains of Moab, east of the Jordan and opposite Jericho (Deuteronomy 1:5; Numbers 22:1). Israel is camped outside the land, which matters because every command in the chapter assumes farms, herds and towns they do not have yet. The place God would choose is left unnamed here, and it proved to be Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:29).
• Why: Moses is preaching the covenant law to the children of the generation that died in the wilderness. They had not stood at Sinai as adults, and they were about to live among people whose graves, kitchens and harvest festivals were all shaped by other gods, so Moses hands them a reason to live differently before he hands them any rules.

Key Verses

For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

Deuteronomy 14:2. Israel was set apart for God, a people He treasured above every other nation on earth. “Peculiar” in the King James does not mean strange; it means belonging to one owner, which is what lets this one verse carry the weight of everything the chapter asks.

And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there … that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always.

Deuteronomy 14:23. Israel was to eat the tenth of its grain, wine, oil and firstborn livestock in God’s presence at the place He chose, so that they would learn to hold Him in awe for life. This is the only sentence in the chapter that says what the tithe was for. Jesus later rebuked men who tithed their garden herbs and left out judgment, mercy and faith (Matthew 23:23), which is the failure this clause was written to prevent.

And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.

Deuteronomy 14:29. Four people with no land of their own were to come and eat their fill, and God attaches His blessing on Israel’s work to that meal. The promise is made to Israel under this covenant rather than offered as a formula anyone can run, though Paul says God still notices what a generous person sows (2 Corinthians 9:6-8).

Key Lessons from Deuteronomy 14

• God told Israel who they were before He told them what to do, and the same reason covered both the graveside and the plate (Deuteronomy 14:1-2).
• Grief for a child of God has somewhere to go, because the Father who claims His people is still living when the one they buried is not (Deuteronomy 14:1).
• Holiness in this chapter reaches the ordinary table, not only the place of worship (Deuteronomy 14:3-21).
• Israel ate the tenth in God’s presence and was told to rejoice there, so giving was designed to finish in joy (Deuteronomy 14:23, 26).
• God made the command easier to keep without making it smaller, allowing a family too far away to carry money instead of a harvest (Deuteronomy 14:24-25).
• The chapter’s last word about giving names four people rather than a cause (Deuteronomy 14:29).

For the whole book at a glance, see our Book of Deuteronomy Summary by Chapter. To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons from Deuteronomy 14.

Bible Study Questions

1. Read Deuteronomy 14:1-2. What does Moses tell Israel about themselves before he gives them a single command, and why might he put it in that order?
2. The camel chews the cud but has no split hoof, and the pig has the split hoof but does not chew the cud (14:7-8). What does it mean that each of them fails the test by half?
3. Verse 23 gives the reason for the tithe in one clause. If that clause were the point of your own giving, what would change about it?
4. Why do you think God let a family living far away turn the tenth into money and spend it once they arrived (14:24-25), and what does that arrangement show about Him?
5. Verse 26 tells the Israelite to buy whatever he longed for and rejoice. What would have to change for giving to feel like that?
6. Verse 29 names four people one by one: a Levite with no land, a resident stranger, an orphan and a widow. Who are they in your own town, and how would you find them?
7. Read Titus 2:14 alongside Deuteronomy 14:2. What did it cost Christ to make a people His own, and how does that change the way you read the commands in this chapter?

Frequently Asked Questions

Deuteronomy 14, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

2 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

4 These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat,

5 The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois.

6 And every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall eat.

7 Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you.

8 And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase.

9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:

10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

11 Of all clean birds ye shall eat.

12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and ossifrage, and the ospray,

13 And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,

14 And every raven after his kind,

15 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,

16 The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan,

17 And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant,

18 And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

19 And every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you: they shall not be eaten.

20 But of all clean fowls ye may eat.

21 Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.

22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.

23 And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always.

24 And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee:

25 Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose:

26 And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household,

27 And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.

28 At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates:

29 And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.