“Chews the cud and has a split hoof”
You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud. (Leviticus 11:3 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An arbitrary checklist for which animals are okay to eat.
The cultural key
Clean land animals had to meet two visible tests at once: a fully split hoof and chewing the cud. The pig has the hoof but not the cud; the camel the cud but not the hoof, so both are excluded. The reasons are much debated, hygiene, symbolic wholeness and order, or simply distinctiveness, but the clearest function is separation: a diet that marked Israel off from its neighbors three times a day. Peter's rooftop vision (Acts 10) declaring all foods clean signals the tearing down of that dividing wall.
Recovered meaning
Whatever the rationale, the food laws made holiness a daily, tangible discipline, turning every meal into a reminder that Israel belonged to God. Their later lifting in the New Testament marks the opening of God's people to the nations.