And ye shall be holy men unto me
They were so by God's act of election, not special and
particular, but general and national; choosing and separating
them to be an holy people to him, above all the people on the
face of the earth, and in a ceremonial sense they observing laws
and appointments of God of this kind; which is the sense here
intended, as appears by what follows: all men, and so these
Israelites, ought to be holy in a moral sense, and some are holy
in a spiritual and evangelical sense, being made holy by the
Spirit of God; of these the Apostle Peter speaks, in allusion to
this, and such like passages, ( 1 Peter 2:9 )
neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in
the field;
or in the house, as Jarchi notes; but the Scripture, as he
observes, speaks of the place where it is more usual for beasts
to tear, and so Aben Ezra; otherwise what is torn elsewhere, or
by whatsoever accident it is bruised and maimed, was not to be
eaten: ye shall cast it to the dogs: for even a stranger was not
to eat of it, or if he did he was unclean, and was obliged to
wash his clothes, and bathe himself, ( Leviticus
17:15 ) and yet Jarchi interprets this figuratively of such
as are like dogs, meaning the Gentiles, whom the Jews used to
call so, see ( Matthew
15:26 ) . An Heathen poet gives instructions perfectly
agreeable to this law;
``do not (says he) eat flesh fed upon by beasts, but leave the remains to the swift dogs F15.''