Swine (animal). χοιρος.
It begins in Leviticus 11:7: “And the swine, though he divides the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.” The decision to take this in any figurative sense is drawn from a prior assumption on the nature of God, which is built from Scripture elsewhere, primarily from the prescient stream which we call the PW (prophetic word). That God fulfilled prophecy is also an admission that God reveals a plan and a reason for acting in history, for this is the very definition of biblical prophecy, making Jehovah God unique among other claimed deities who are touted as real only by their priests and devotees primarily through tradition and emotion.
In the case of swine, and all animals in the OT used in a religious context, a symbol is expected because of this prior edification from the prophetic, namely, that God’s nature does not command man to obey laws simply because God wants them to, but that there is both a specific reason for this law and a specific meaning to this law beyond the command itself.
This “beyond” applies also to time and place, as God is expected to use history to slowly reveal meaning to the extent that man is capable of understanding and using it, what is called a “progressive revelation.”
We ask: Why does God forbid eating animals who are either not cloven-footed or who don’t chew the cud? If this is not a symbol of something else, then the command is similar to God saying, “Wear your underwear outside your pants thirty times each year,” and therefore becomes an absurdity, an inherited regional religious observance blindly copied from the pagans, or it becomes, as with the orthodox, a mere generally applied concept such as “unclean.” If we are informed by the lessons of prophecy, however, this allows all of these to be in operation as long as the missing meaning, which has been forced out by them, is to remain supreme and rule over them. It can be a kind of absurdity because to the majority of the population who operate on religious assumptions outside this prophetic example, past and present, it is an absurd and worthless biblical detail and quirk, and is functionally or expressly useless to them. It does not matter if it was borrowed from the pagans because the prophetic is also given to generations far in the future, God using and redeeming the things of that present ancient world that will remain and can be understood in that future. It is also a concept, as “unclean.” However much the faithless world misuses the symbol and bits of truth that lingers in their interpretations, it never removes or violates the overriding, implacable scriptural emphasis on God’s promise of future transcendent meaning through the use of present temporal things.
So, what does an animal that divides the hoof symbolize and what does a hog symbolize that is beyond blind, reflexive tradition, absurdity, and philosophical concepts? The space required to handle detail such as the cloven hoof we will leave for another book, but as for the pig, and other animals used in the law, they receptively stand for people, and those unclean by their misuse or disregard for the PW, for the swine being unclean by its willingness to eat anything (to take to heart any other religious text besides that of God’s) and to wallow in the filth of the earth (to uncaringly become involved in the cares, traditions, sins, and schemes of the carnal world). The chewing of cud is a symbol for the meditation and careful thought on the prophetic scriptures, which the swine does not do. Those that eat such an animal are eating, or taking as nourishment, the religious influence of such people. Sheep and goats and cows are good, sacrificial animals, and are qualified to stand for the swine’s opposite, Messiah, who will be sacrificed for the sins of the world (that is, primarily the sins of the misuse and disregard of the PW). “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” (Mt 7:6). That meaning, “Do not give the pearls of the knowledge of the Messianic revelation to those who who have construed religion as scripturally founded on other things, as you will not convert them, but will provoke them to move to protect their sinful religious investments and kill you.” In chapter 8, we see Jesus meeting the demoniac who was possessed. The reason for this possession is not important. What is important is the expressed religious view of the spirit which was within them: “what have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” (See Mt 8:29, also in Mark 5 and Luke 8.) That spirit, either of them or inhabiting them, exhibited knowledge of the time prophecies of Messiah’s coming, that Messiah was Jesus, but refused to be informed by them and instead spiritually oppressed that individual. This is a figure of the religious leaders who oppressed the true faithful if Israel. These spirits knew that Jesus would cast them out, so they replied: “If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine” (Mt 8:31). The request, granted by Jesus, was for this truth, this signification of the Messianic coming, to be applied to the objects of the law, being that signification of Messiah (clean animal) and His enemies (unclean animals) that are used in the law to teach Messiah as Jesus of Nazareth. The evil spirits made the request to go back into the rudiments of the Messianic revelation rather than into its ultimate implications, as if to save itself. This, however, is impossible, because of the prophecy that Jesus Messiah will in the latter days destroy all such swine, or such evil of Messianically de-centered religion, spirituality, and philosophy. The effect of the demons’ attempt at self-preservation was the madness that occurs in religious circles who see before them the true revelation of their scriptures but refuse it for lesser things contained within it.
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