24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people. 

25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 

26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

Today’s verses echo verse 7 at the start of the chapter. And back when I commented on verse 6, I grouped verse 27 with it as it also echoed the same sentiments against wizardry. It seems like there might be a chiasmatic structure here, with each thought at the start rhyming with those at the end in inverse order. That would explain the seemingly sudden shift of subject in verse 27, giving it poetic intent. That being said, things do get muddled in the middle and it is hard to see the continuing reflection pattern in verses 9-21. Perhaps there was once a poem through here and all we have remaining today are the bookends.

In any case, these verses reiterate God’s message to Israel that they are to be a separate, even a severed people. They were to stand out, to be peculiar, to resist the pull of their surrounding environment, to override their human instinct to conform and adapt. This is a hard thing. It goes against our basic nature. But so is resisting temptation and sin. Our nature, including our desire to conform and also our appetites, are given to us for good reasons, and they lead us to many good things, but both must be reined in, mastered, and at times surrendered entirely.