Sunday, February 5, 2012

Leviticus 17

God outlines that all the sacrifices must be consolidated from the open field to the altar area. Presumably, the Israelites were making sacrifices in the open field otherwise God would not have had to say this. I have a lot of sympathy for this perspective because maybe the Israelites wanted to stay away from that area after the high priest Aaron's sons were killed there.

The text goes on to say that all the blood animals must be drained before they can be eaten. The reasoning - life is in the blood. This I find interesting. As for modern corrolarries, it is common to drain the animal of blood and directly consuming blood is not common. We do have things like blood pudding, sausage made of blood, but blood consumption has become a counter-cultural "Goth" affiliation.

Regardless of clean and unclean meats in the New Testament, I am not aware of any New Testament revocation of the rule or its purpose. Specifically, I am unaware in the New Testament that animal blood does not still carry its life, and hence blood is now appropriate to eat.

The chapter ends with a stand-alone rule about being unclean for eating meat of animals killed in the wild. The consequence is being ceremonially unclean. The cure, which I think applies for all situations of eating unclean meats - wash your clothes and bathe, and waiting until evenng.

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