June 10, 2018: Day 57 – Leviticus 17

When we served in Italy we had the opportunity to take part in the yearly slaughter of the pig which took place in the beginning of January, normally the 6th.  Part of the process was to bleed the pig and to gather his blood and make it into blood pudding.  I had an opportunity, without me knowing it, to take part in the eating of that blood pudding.  It was not nearly as tasty as it may sound.  It was pretty nasty.  

But this chapter in Leviticus clearly commands the people of Israel to not eat any of the blood of any animal.  I also like my meat medium rare, and there is naturally some blood in it when you eat it that way, although a good butcher will tell you that it actually isn’t the blood.  I never did quite understand that.  So why the commandment not to eat blood?  We find a clue in vs.7 which talks about prostituting themselves to “goat-demons”.  Wait, what?  Well, it was a common practice to worship many gods back then, even if the Israelites were commanded against it.  The worship and sacrifice of animals to other gods was the normal modus operandi for even some Israelites as they covertly tried to cover their bases by worshiping Yahweh as well as the gods of the area.  As you can imagine, this infuriated God.  Just look at the example of Aaron and the golden calf and you can see the repercussions of that act.

Many of the gods when they were worshiped demanded that blood be imbibed from the animals that were slaughtered.  This is why animals for sacrifice could only be done so by the priest and at the tent of meeting.  You were not allowed to go off and do it by yourself because the temptation would be to throw in some obeisance to that other god who didn’t demand much, just  a little sacrifice.  That was unacceptable.  The prohibition against eating blood stopped this practice in its tracks, as did the prohibition to sacrifice any animal except those that were presented to the priests in the tent.  I’ll still take my meat medium rare.