You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. The prohibition applies both to eating the unclean animals and to touching their carcasses. The contact prohibition for the carcasses of unclean animals extends the restriction beyond the dining table into ordinary life: even accidental or necessary contact with an unclean animal's dead body creates ritual impurity. The dual prohibition — eating and touching — communicates the comprehensiveness of the covenant's clean/unclean boundary: it governs both intentional consumption and inadvertent contact.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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