Hebrews 13:9 — Meats of the Altar, Not the Food Laws

This verse is used to say that the clean and unclean food laws of Leviticus 11 are finished. Read the next verse: “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle” (13:10). The meats in view are the sacrificial meals of the altar service. Hebrews 9:10 lists the same things among the tabernacle rites: “meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances.”

Those altar meals never established the heart. Favor does, through the one offering. Leviticus 11 is not an altar meal at all; it is Yahuah’s word on what is food. Nothing in Hebrews 13 touches it. The verse opens with a warning against “divers and strange doctrines,” and right before it stands “Yahushua the Messiah the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (13:8). A teaching that turns this verse into permission to eat what Yahuah called unclean is the kind of strange doctrine the verse warns against.