Acts 11:8 → Ezekiel 4:14

Peter's protest — "nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth" (Acts 11:8) — is almost the words of Ezekiel, who, commanded to eat bread baked over defiling fuel, pleaded, "I have never defiled myself... No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth" (Ezekiel 4:14). Both men are devout keepers of the food laws; both are pressed by God to act against them. In Ezekiel the concession dramatized the defilement of exile; in Peter's vision the command abolishes the distinction altogether. The relationship is contrast within a shared piety: the very scruple that marked covenant faithfulness under the Law is now overruled by the God who has made all things clean, teaching Peter — and the church — that the Gentiles are no longer to be refused, for God has cleansed them in Christ.