Deuteronomy, 14

1. 'You are children of Yahweh your God. You must not gash yourselves or shave your foreheads for the dead.

2. For you are a people consecrated to Yahweh your God, and Yahweh has chosen you to be his own people from all the peoples on the earth.

3. 'You must not eat anything disgusting.

4. These are the animals you may eat: ox, sheep, goat,

5. deer, gazelle, roebuck, ibex, antelope, oryx, mountain sheep.

6. You may eat any animal that has a divided and cloven hoof and that is a ruminant.

7. Of those, however, that are ruminants and of those that have a divided and cloven hoof you may not eat the following: the camel, the hare and the coney, which are ruminants but have no cloven hoof; you must class them as unclean.

8. So also the pig, which though it has a cloven hoof is not a ruminant; you must class it as unclean. You must neither eat the meat of such animals nor touch their dead bodies.

9. 'Of whatever lives in water you may eat the following: you may eat anything that has fins and scales.

10. But you must not eat anything without fins and scales: you must class it as unclean.

11. 'You may eat all clean birds,

12. but the following birds you must not eat: the tawny vulture, the griffon, the osprey,

13. the kite and the several kinds of buzzard,

14. all kinds of raven,

15. the ostrich, the screech owl, the seagull, the several kinds of hawk,

16. owl, barn owl, ibis,

17. pelican, white vulture, cormorant,

18. stork, the several kinds of heron, hoopoe and bat.

19. You are to class all winged insects as unclean and must not eat them.

20. You may eat any clean fowl.

21. 'You must not eat any animal that has died a natural death. You may give it to a resident foreigner to eat, or sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people consecrated to Yahweh your God. 'You must not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

22. 'Every year, you must take a tithe of what your fields produce from what you have sown

23. and, in the presence of Yahweh your God, in the place where he chooses to give his name a home, you must eat the tithe of your wheat, of your new wine and of your oil, and the first-born of your herd and flock; and by so doing, you will learn always to fear Yahweh your God.

24. 'If the road is too long for you, if you cannot bring your tithe because the place in which Yahweh chooses to make a home for his name is too far away, when Yahweh your God has blessed you,

25. you must convert it into money and, with the money clasped in your hand, you must go to the place chosen by Yahweh your God;

26. there you may spend the money on whatever you like, oxen, sheep, wine, fermented liquor, anything you please. There you must eat in the presence of Yahweh your God and rejoice, you and your household.

27. Do not neglect the Levite living in your community, since he has no share or heritage of his own among you.

28. 'At the end of every three years, you must take all the tithes of your harvests for that year and collect them in your community.

29. Then the Levite -- since he has no share or heritage of his own among you -- the foreigner, the orphan and the widow living in your community, will come and eat all they want. And so Yahweh your God will bless you in all the labours that you undertake.'