Acts 10:9-16 On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew near to the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:… The distinction between clean and unclean meats was one of the insuperable barriers between the Gentile and the Jew — a barrier which prevented all intercourse between them because it rendered it impossible for them to meet at the same table or in social life. In the society of a Gentile a Jew was liable at any moment to those ceremonial defilements which involved all kinds of seclusion and inconvenience; and not only so, but it was mainly by partaking of unclean food that the Gentiles became themselves so unclean in the eyes of the Jews. It is hardly possible to put into words the intensity of horror and revolt with which the Jews regarded swine. They were to them the very ideal and quintessence of all that must be looked upon with an energetic concentration of disgust. He would not even mention a pig by name, but spoke of it as "the other thing." When in the days of Hyrcanus a pig had been surreptitiously put into a box and drawn up the walls of Jerusalem, the Jews declared that a shudder of earthquake had run through 400 parasangs of the Holy Land. Yet this filthy and atrocious creature was the chief delicacy at Gentile banquets, and in one form or other one of the commonest articles of Gentile consumption. How could a Jew touch or speak to a man who might on that very day have partaken of the abomination? The cleansing of all articles of food involved immediately the acceptance of Jews and Gentiles on equal footing to equal privileges. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: |
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