Ulangan 12:20

The Sanctity of Blood

12:20 When the Lord your God extends your borders as he said he would do and you say, “I want to eat meat just as I please,” ¹  you may do so as you wish. ² 

Ulangan 12:15

Regulations for Profane Slaughter

12:15 On the other hand, you may slaughter and eat meat as you please when the Lord your God blesses you ³  in all your villages. ⁴  Both the ritually pure and impure may eat it, whether it is a gazelle or an ibex.

Ulangan 12:27

12:27 You must offer your burnt offerings, both meat and blood, on the altar of the Lord your God; the blood of your other sacrifices ⁵  you must pour out on his ⁶  altar while you eat the meat.

Ulangan 12:23

12:23 However, by no means eat the blood, for the blood is life itself ⁷  – you must not eat the life with the meat!

Ulangan 12:22

12:22 Like you eat the gazelle or ibex, so you may eat these; the ritually impure and pure alike may eat them.

Ulangan 15:20

15:20 You and your household must eat them annually before the Lord your God in the place he ⁸  chooses.

Ulangan 14:8

14:8 Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, ⁹  it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains.

Ulangan 28:53

28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, ¹⁰  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ¹¹  by which your enemies will constrict you.

Ulangan 32:42

32:42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood,

and my sword will devour flesh –

the blood of the slaughtered and captured,

the chief ¹²  of the enemy’s leaders!’”

Ulangan 16:4

16:4 There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land ¹³  for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. ¹⁴ 

Ulangan 28:55

28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ¹⁵  you in your villages.

Ulangan 28:31

28:31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you.

Ulangan 15:22

15:22 You may eat it in your villages, ¹⁶  whether you are ritually impure or clean, ¹⁷  just as you would eat a gazelle or an ibex.

Ulangan 16:7

16:7 You must cook ¹⁸  and eat it in the place the Lord your God chooses; you may return the next morning to your tents.

Ulangan 14:3

14:3 You must not eat any forbidden ¹⁹  thing.

Ulangan 14:7

14:7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. ²⁰  (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you).

Ulangan 12:21

12:21 If the place he ²¹  chooses to locate his name is too far for you, you may slaughter any of your herd and flock he ²²  has given you just as I have stipulated; you may eat them in your villages ²³  just as you wish.

Ulangan 5:26

5:26 Who is there from the entire human race ²⁴  who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the middle of the fire as we have, and has lived?

Ulangan 12:26

12:26 Only the holy things and votive offerings that belong to you, you must pick up and take to the place the Lord will choose. ²⁵ 

Ulangan 32:14

32:14 butter from the herd

and milk from the flock,

along with the fat of lambs,

rams and goats of Bashan,

along with the best of the kernels of wheat;

and from the juice of grapes you drank wine.

Ulangan 14:21

14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages ²⁶  and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. ²⁷ 

[12:20]  ¹ tn Heb “for my soul desires to eat meat.”

[12:20]  ² tn Heb “according to all the desire of your soul you may eat meat.”

[12:15]  ³ tn Heb “only in all the desire of your soul you may sacrifice and eat flesh according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given to you.”

[12:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “gates” (so KJV, NASB; likewise in vv. 17, 18).

[12:27]  ⁵ sn These other sacrifices would be so-called peace or fellowship offerings whose ritual required a different use of the blood from that of burnt (sin and trespass) offerings (cf. Lev 3; 7:11-14, 19-21).

[12:27]  ⁶ tn Heb “on the altar of the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[12:23]  ⁷ sn The blood is life itself. This is a figure of speech (metonymy) in which the cause or means (the blood) stands for the result or effect (life). That is, life depends upon the existence and circulation of blood, a truth known empirically but not scientifically tested and proved until the 17th century a.d. (cf. Lev 17:11).

[15:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “the Lord.” The translation uses a pronoun for stylistic reasons. See note on “he” in 15:4.

[14:8]  ⁹ tc The MT lacks (probably by haplography) the phrase וְשֹׁסַע שֶׁסַע פַּרְסָה (vÿshosa’ shesa’ parsah, “and is clovenfooted,” i.e., “has parted hooves”), a phrase found in the otherwise exact parallel in Lev 11:7. The LXX and Smr attest the longer reading here. The meaning is, however, clear without it.

[28:53]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

[28:53]  ¹¹ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

[32:42]  ¹² tn Or “head” (the same Hebrew word can mean “head” in the sense of “leader, chieftain” or “head” in the sense of body part).

[16:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “leaven must not be seen among you in all your border.”

[16:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “remain all night until the morning” (so KJV, ASV). This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[28:55]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

[15:22]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in your gates.”

[15:22]  ¹⁷ tc The LXX adds ἐν σοί (en soi, “among you”) to make clear that the antecedent is the people and not the animals. That is, the people, whether ritually purified or not, may eat such defective animals.

[16:7]  ¹⁸ tn The rules that governed the Passover meal are found in Exod 12:1-51, and Deut 16:1-8. The word translated “cook” (בָּשַׁל, bashal) here is translated “boil” in other places (e.g. Exod 23:19, 1 Sam 2:13-15). This would seem to contradict Exod 12:9 where the Israelites are told not to eat the Passover sacrifice raw or boiled. However, 2 Chr 35:13 recounts the celebration of a Passover feast during the reign of Josiah, and explains that the people “cooked (בָּשַׁל, bashal) the Passover sacrifices over the open fire.” The use of בָּשַׁל (bashal) with “fire” (אֵשׁ, ’esh) suggests that the word could be used to speak of boiling or roasting.

[14:3]  ¹⁹ tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “forbidden; abhorrent”) describes anything detestable to the Lord because of its innate evil or inconsistency with his own nature and character. See note on the word “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25. Cf. KJV “abominable”; NIV “detestable”; NRSV “abhorrent.”

[14:7]  ²⁰ tn The Hebrew term שָׁפָן (shafan) may refer to the “coney” (cf. KJV, NIV) or hyrax (“rock badger,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[12:21]  ²¹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 12:5.

[12:21]  ²² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 12:5.

[12:21]  ²³ tn Heb “gates” (so KJV, NASB); NAB “in your own community.”

[5:26]  ²⁴ tn Heb “who is there of all flesh.”

[12:26]  ²⁵ tc Again, to complete a commonly attested wording the LXX adds after “choose” the phrase “to place his name there.” This shows insensitivity to deliberate departures from literary stereotypes. The MT reading is to be preferred.

[14:21]  ²⁶ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

[14:21]  ²⁷ sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the Lord and fittingly concludes the topic of various breaches of purity and holiness as represented by the ingestion of unclean animals (vv. 3-21). See C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid In Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35.