For I [am] the Lord your God
Their Lord, and therefore had a right to enjoin them what laws he
pleased concerning their food; and their God, their covenant God,
and therefore would consult their good, and direct them to what
was most proper, convenient, and wholesome for them:
ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be
holy, for I
[am] holy;
that is, separate themselves from all other people, and be
distinct from them, by using a different diet from theirs, as
their Lord and God was different from all others, so called; and
thus by observing his commands, and living according to his will,
and to his glory, they would be holy in a moral sense, as they
ought to be, who were under the peculiar care and notice of a
holy God, and so highly favoured by him; and particularly by
attending to the above laws concerning food, they would be kept
from mixing with, and having conversation with the Gentiles, and
so be preserved from falling into idolatry, and continue a holy
people, serving and worshipping the Lord their God, and him only;
and which seems to be a principal view as to religion, in
delivering out the above commands:
neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of
creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth;
which is repeated to keep them at the utmost distance from these
things, and to fill them with an aversion to them, that they
might be careful to avoid them. There is no penalty annexed to
these laws, but the breach of them making them unclean, thereby
they were debarred the use of the sanctuary, and of holy things,
and of the conversation of men, for that day; but, according to
the Jewish writers, such transgressions were punishable with
stripes. Jarchi observes out of the Talmud F12, that
he that eateth "putitha" (a small water reptile) was to be beaten
four times, and if an ant or pismire five times, and if a wasp or
hornet six times.