consequently interdicted to the Israelites, as unfit for human food.
"And the swine, though he divideth the hoof and be cloven-footed, yet he
cheweth not the cud. He is unclean to you."--Lev. xi. 7. Strict,
however, as the law was respecting the cud-chewing and hoof-divided
animals, the Jews, with their usual perversity and violation of the
divine commands, seem afterwards to have ignored the prohibition; for,
unless they ate pork, it is difficult to conceive for what purpose they
kept troves of swine, as from the circumstance recorded in Matthew
xviii. 32, when Jesus was in Galilee, and the devils, cast out of the
two men, were permitted to enter the herd of swine that were feeding on
the hills in the neighbourhood of the Sea of Tiberias, it is very
evident they did. There is only one interpretation by which we can
account for a prohibition that debarred the Jews from so many foods
which we regard as nutritious luxuries, that, being fat and the texture
more hard of digestion than other meats, they were likely, in a hot dry
climate, where vigorous exercise could seldom be taken, to produce
disease, and especially cutaneous affections; indeed, in this light, as
a code of sanitary ethics, the book of Leviticus is the most admirable
system of moral government ever conceived for man's benefit.