Clean and Unclean
A Riddle for the Logical Mind
Three verses. One logical answer. Can you find it?
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Genesis 7:2 (KJV) Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
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Acts 10:28 (KJV) And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.
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Isaiah 66:17 (KJV) They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD [Yahuah].
Read all three. Lay them side by side. What must be true?
Peter said it years after the cross.
Acts 10:14 (KJV) But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.
- Noah knew clean from unclean before there was a Jew. — Genesis 7:2
- Peter said the vision was about men. — Acts 10:28
- At His coming, swine eaters are consumed. — Isaiah 66:17
Clean and unclean was never Jewish, and it never ended.
Why It Matters
The church teaches that the food laws were for the Jews and that Peter's vision ended them. Noah took clean beasts "by sevens" and unclean "by two" (Genesis 7:2). That was centuries before Abraham, Moses, or a single Jew. Peter explained his own vision: "God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean" (Acts 10:28). The vision was about men, not menus. Isaiah sees those "eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse" consumed "together" at Yahuah's coming (Isaiah 66:17). The line between clean and unclean was drawn before Israel, never moved by Peter, and still stands at the end.
Peter's own words in the vision tell the story. Years after the resurrection he said, "I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean" (Acts 10:14). He had walked with Yahushua for three and a half years. He never heard Him end the food laws.
The other verse used is Mark 7:19. The KJV reads "purging all meats." Several modern versions add, in parentheses, that He "declared all foods clean." That line is the translators' comment, not a word of the text. The subject of Mark 7 is unwashed hands, a tradition of the elders, not unclean animals. And the Greek broma means food, which in Scripture means what Yahuah called food in the first place. Paul agrees: food is "sanctified by the word of God" (1 Timothy 4:5). That word is Leviticus 11.
This matters because holiness was first taught at the table. "Ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy" closes the food chapter (Leviticus 11:44-45). Peter quotes that very line to believers (1 Peter 1:16). The command did not change when it crossed into the New Testament. A teaching that throws out the line teaches the believer that holiness has no daily shape.
Revelation keeps the category to the last. Fallen Babylon becomes "the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird" (Revelation 18:2). Unclean still means unclean.