We pass over a great deal of ceremonial detail that could not apply to any other context but Ancient Israel. The nature of our study here is to understand the background of the Law in terms of how it would apply to us today. This chapter follows upon the instructions for the Day of Atonement, and stands in the context of making offerings. However, we find here an eternal divine principle of how God demands respect for His Creation.
Thus, the first six verses refer to any food that is ritually consumed in the Presence of Jehovah, in the sense of a shared meal declaring peace with God. This does not refer to common food preparation. It would be impossible for the priesthood to handle overseeing a ritual slaughter every day of the year for several hundred thousand households. This is for those special times of celebration. The idea is that bringing the dead carcass to the Temple is an insult to the Lord. You can’t treat a special meal in the Divine Presence as any other meal. The blood must be poured out before Him, and the entrails and fatty parts offered on the altar.
But then the commandment makes a particular point of warning that Jehovah is the only deity Israel serves. God refers to making sacrifices to goats, and it is often rightly translated as “demons” because it’s a reference to the goat idols some Israelis had picked up in Egypt. We know from rabbinical traditions that some small minority of the nation carried idols throughout the Exodus, and this was the source of much trouble. What the text here says is that, if they get caught, they can executed (“cut off”).
Next comes something that applies to all of humanity until the End of All Things: You shall not consume the blood of animals. Even in the daily food preparation at home, there must be a reverence toward God and His Creation by draining the blood carefully before any further processing of the carcass. God notes that this applies to every human, and we see that the Apostles in Acts 15 take it that way.
If nothing else, we should show reverence that one of God’s creatures must sacrifice its life for our survival. The whole point of the ritual law that we skipped over at this point is the symbolism of bloodshed to mark the price of sin. Sin kills; God allows us to use the blood of proxies to cover our sins. Adam and Eve covered their nakedness with animal skins, meaning animals died to protect them after the Fall. Eating meat is optional, but shedding blood is not. If you eat meat, it has to be done properly.
Furthermore, that blood should ideally be shed at your own hands. God makes one small allowance for eating meat from animals you didn’t kill yourself (or someone in your family killed). Presumably, you’re going to make sure it is bled before eating it. If you eat it, then you have touched a carcass. Have respect for life by noting that you are ceremonially unclean among human company until the next day (Hebrew days started at nightfall). Consider that the folks most likely to eat what we might jokingly call “road kill” would be people too poor to own or buy animals they could slaughter.
This is how we handle things today. While we no longer face the rituals that applied to Israel, we can easily understand how the modern food industry often ignores the thrust of this commandment. The whole idea is not the rules; God realizes that we don’t always have too many options. Our reverence for life is the issue, not the Kosher Law. Jesus made that point, and Peter’s housetop experience in Joppa leaves no doubt. We don’t bless the food, we bless the God who provides it.
