| |
SUBJECT: Seething a Calf in its Mother's Milk -
Deuteronomy 14:21 and Exodus 23:19
QUESTIONS: Are these verses stating that we should not mix
milk and meat? What is being said in these verses?
ANSWER:
Beyond having the feeling that it would be cruel to cook a
kid or calf in something that was designed to give it life,
it was part of a pagan fertility rite. Notice first the
verses then the commentaries:
Deuteronomy 14:21
Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou
shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that
he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for
thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God. Thou shalt
not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
Exodus 23:19
The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring
into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a
kid in his mother's milk.
***************
Exodus 23:19
[Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk]
This precept is repeated. See the marginal references. If we
connect the first of the two preceding precepts with the
Passover, and the second with Pentecost, it seems reasonable
to connect this with the Feast of Tabernacles. The only
explanation which accords with this connection is one which
refers to a superstitious custom connected with the harvest;
in which a kid was seethed in its mother's milk to
propitiate in some way the deities, and the milk was
sprinkled on the fruit trees, fields and gardens, as a charm
to improve the crops of the coming year. Others take it to
be a prohibition of a custom of great antiquity among the
Arabs, of preparing a gross sort of food by stewing a kid in
milk, with the addition of certain ingredients of a
stimulating nature: and others take it in connection with
the prohibitions to slaughter a cow and a calf, or a ewe and
her lamb, on the same day <Lev. 22:28>, or to take a bird
along with her young in the nest <Deut. 22:6>. It is thus
understood as a protest against cruelty and outraging the
order of nature.
(from Barnes' Notes)
**************
Exodus 23:18-19
Seethe a kid. This direction seems oddly at variance
with the other regulations, and long caused much speculation
by the commentators. Then, in the Ugarit literature
discovered in 1930, it was learned that boiling a kid in its
mother's milk was a Canaanite practice used in connection
with fertility rites. Israel, by the presentation of
the first fruits, acknowledged that blessing came from
Jehovah, not from magic. ~from
Wycliffe Commentary
*************
Exodus 23:19
[Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.]
This passage has greatly perplexed commentators; but Dr.
Cudworth is supposed to have given it its true meaning by
quoting a MS. comment of a Karaite Jew, which he met with,
on this passage. "It was a custom of the ancient pagans,
when they had gathered in all their fruits, to take a kid
and boil it in the milk of its dam, and then, in a magical
way, to go about and sprinkle with it all their trees and
fields, gardens and orchards thinking by these means to make
them fruitful, that they might bring forth more abundantly
in the following year."-- Cudworth on the Lord's Supper,
4to.
I give this comment as I find it, and add that Spenser has
shown that the Zabii used this kind of magical milk to
sprinkle their trees and fields, in order to make them
fruitful. Others understand it of eating flesh and milk
together; others of a lamb or a kid while it is sucking its
mother, and that the paschal lamb is here intended, which it
was not lawful to offer while sucking.
After all the learned labour which critics have bestowed on
this passage, and by which the obscurity in some cases has
become more intense, the simple object of the precept seems
to be this: "Thou shalt do nothing that may have any
tendency to blunt thy moral feelings, or teach thee hardness
of heart." Even human nature shudders at the thought of
causing the another to lend her milk to seethe the flesh of
her young one! We need go no further for the delicate,
tender, humane, and impressive meaning of this precept.
~from Adam Clarke Commentary
back to the top |
|
|