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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 14

1 You are children of the Lord your God.⁠ Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead.⁠ 2 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth.⁠ 3 You must not eat any forbidden thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the ibex, the gazelle, the deer, the wild goat, the antelope, the wild oryx, and the mountain sheep. 6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. 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. (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you.) 8 Also, the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. 9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you. 11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah after its species, 14 every raven after its species, 15 the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, the falcon after its species, 16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl, 17 the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, and the bat. 19 And any swarming winged thing is impure to you—they may not be eaten. 20 You may eat any winged creature that is clean. 21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages 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.⁠ 22 You must be certain to tithe all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year. 23 In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place he chooses to locate his name, you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. 24 When he blesses you, if the place where he chooses to locate his name is distant, 25 you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself. 26 Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it. 27 As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you. 28 At the end of every three years you must bring all the tithe of your produce, in that very year, and you must store it up in your villages. 29 Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Exodus 23 preserves the earlier version of the command to not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk, where it is a temple requirement for those bringing offerings. Deuteronomy 14 reshapes the command into a generic rule that everyone has to follow.

Passages

Exodus 23:19

Hebrew Bible
18 “You must not offer the blood of my sacrifice with bread containing yeast; the fat of my festal sacrifice must not remain until morning. 19 The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God. “You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. 20 “I am going to send a messenger before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Deuteronomy 14:21

Hebrew Bible
20 You may eat any winged creature that is clean. 21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages 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. 22 You must be certain to tithe all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

... Young goats were not to be cooked in their mother’s milk according to Exodus 23:19b; 34:26b; and Deuteronomy 14:21b, although the reference to prohibited animals in Deuteronomy 14:21 is only incidental. This curious taboo has generally been interpreted as a verdict against a Canaanite fertility rite (see Noth 1961: 156; von Rad 1964: 73; Childs 1974: 485-86). Keel (1980), however, argued that this prohibition was more likely to have been both ethically and religiously motivated. It was rooted in respect for the aspect of divine creation that is present in the loving care of a mother. Milgrom (1991: 741) argued that the prohibition was the result of the simultaneous fusion of life and confusion between the life expressed in the mother’s milk and the death embodied in the cooked kid. The mother’s milk was part of the essence of life and was therefore not to be associated with death. The prohibition originally only applied to official cult activities; however, Deuteronomy rendered it a dietary law to which every household must adhere ...
Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 421.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21

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