God extended the warning about treaties into a warning about tables. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, renders the progression clearly.
"Lest you strike covenant with the dwellers in the land, and they draw you astray after their idols, and they sacrifice to their idols, and invite you, and you eat of the sacrifices of their idols" (Exodus 34:15).
The sequence is precise. First the covenant - a political treaty. Then the invitation - a friendly meal. Then the sacrifices - food that has been offered to an idol before it reaches your plate. Then, without any further step, you are participating in avodah zarah, foreign worship, simply by chewing.
The Targum is predicting what the sages would later codify in tractate Avodah Zarah of the Mishnah, which governs Jewish commercial and social interactions with idolaters. The logic is not squeamishness. It is spiritual metabolism. What enters the body becomes part of the body. The food that was offered to an idol carries, the rabbis taught, the imprint of that offering. To eat it is to absorb the avodah zarah into one's own self.
Jewish dietary law is not only about health or cleanliness. It is about refusing to let the world's religions reach us through our digestion.
Takeaway: What we eat shapes who we worship. The table is one of the first battlegrounds of spiritual identity, and the Torah guards it closely.