must be clean

To Moses was given a dietary and sanitary code that was to govern Israel. It was a code founded on scientific principles. It was the most complete not only of its own time, but of the millenniums that followed. It would be difficult for any student to escape the conclusion that the Mosaic dietary and sanitary code was dictated from a full knowledge of biological laws as well as a complete knowledge of human physiology and of advanced medical and scientific principles. One of the prohibitions of that code ran against the use by the Israelites of sea foods ‘that have not fins and scales.’

Today we eat many wholesome sea foods that do not meet this ancient requirement. Again, it must be said that it is not for me to attempt to suggest the reasons why the Lord gave this great law, nor the reasons why e made this and other dietary distinctions. But looking at the matter from the point of view of human knowledge, one reason why the Lord forbade such things to ancient Israel might have been the extreme perishability of certain sea foods which would not be found either in the Wilderness or in Palestine, sea foods which rapidly decay, and which, in decaying, generate poisons, destructive of health and, indeed, of life itself. Ancient Israel had no such rapid transportation as would enable the delivery of such food materials while they were still fresh, and no refrigerating processes by which they might preserve such sea food materials pending the time they were to be eaten. Under such conditions, even a wise human lawgiver would today enact such a law as was given to ancient Israel, and for the reasons I have suggested. But however that may be, the Lord made to Israel an absolute prohibition against the eating of certain of such foods.

But in our time, with our rapid transportation, our efficient refrigeration, such sea foods may be properly preserved and, so preserved, seem as wholesome as other sea foods that have fins and scales; the Lord has not forbidden these foods to us and we eat them.

Thus the law that God’s people must be clean and healthy has not changed, but the rule prescribed to secure obedience to the law has changed with the change in the manner of things.



President J. Reuben Clark, Improvement Era, November 1933 as quoted in Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.223, 224