The Biblical
Explanations of Injunctions Regarding How to Kill Animals
Each of the the
first seven of the eight Biblical laws that we just listed is explicitly
explained by its Biblical verse(s) as related to sensitivity to life,
compassion to life, preserving resources for the sake of life, and/or avoiding
disgusting behavior.
1.
Basic sensitivity is required toward a slaughtered animal and the
blood that spills as it gasps – the “breath”[1] of the animal
(Lev. 17:10, 14; Deut. 12:23-24):
i.
Such blood is forbidden to all people as beings that who also
“breathe” (Lev. 17:12).[2] In the words of Genesis, even the
fore-parents of all of humanity – Noah and his family – were commanded thus:
You shall not eat the blood of breathing flesh. (Genesis 9:4)
ii.
An Israelite who does not offer the blood to God considered a spiller
of blood (Lev. 17:4) who has not atoned (Lev. 17:11; Deut. 12:27) for the
necessary but problematic killing of that life (Lev. 17:11).[3] An Israelite who cannot offer the blood in
the sacred center of worship, because he is traveling and hunting (Lev. 17:13)
or lives at a distance (Deut. 12:20-21),[4] is required to
at least let the blood spilled from a dying animal be absorbed into the ground
(Deut. 12:24) or even to cover it with soil (Lev. 17:13) so that it will not be
left visible until it is absorbed.[5]
In other words,
even if eating meat is nutritionally necessary and thus not psychologically
disturbing to most homo sapiens, the Torah views consuming the blood
that pours out while the animal dies as particularly insensitive.
iii.
In line with this Biblical sensitivity regarding the blood that
spilled from a dying animal – to either offer the blood on an altar before
eating the animal or to wait until the blood absorbed in the ground (or, at
least, to leave the blood covered until it gets absorbed), it is not surprising
both that Leviticus and Deuteronomy always describe killing animals by
slaughtering[6] but never by
the more barbaric methods of bludgeoning or decapitation.[7] It is not surprising that Isaiah 66:3
condemns those individuals who kill their cattle [more humanely] by
slaughtering the cattle even as they strike fellow humans without
compunction. It is not surprising that
Isaiah 66:3 condemns those individuals who piously slaughter the oxen and sheep
that they eat while callously decapitating their [presumably old] dogs that
they discard.
iv.
Eating the meat of an animal as it still bleeds or as it lies near its
uncovered blood is considered so barbaric[8] a form of dark
magic (Leviticus 19:26-28), of psychologically and ethically dark behavior.[9]
2. In line with the Biblical injunctions against consuming blood and the
Biblical call to slaughter instead of bludgeon animals, the Torah also demands
compassion toward animals, especially an animal that one is eating.
i.
Deuteronomy forbids one to take the chicks,
which it calls “the children”, with the dam, which it calls the “mother”:
"Do not take the mother with the children. Take the children but let the
mother go so that things will go well with you and you will live long"
(22:6-7).
ii.
Exodus and Leviticus forbid culling the
newborn male calf from its bewildered “mother” cow that physically needs to
nurse: “Let [firstborn cattle and sheep] stay with their mothers for the
first seven days” (Exodus 22:30).
"When a bull, sheep, or goat is born, he shall stay under his
mother for seven days” (Leviticus 22:26).
iii.
Leviticus forbids killing a bull and its
“son” for the same meat-eating occasion: “A bull or a ram, you shall not kill him
and his son on the same day” (Leviticus 22:28).
iv.
Exodus forbids cooking a kid in its
mother’s milk: “Do not cook a kid in his mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19,
34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21).[10]
v.
Leviticus 19:19 forbids yoking a bull and
donkey together to plow.
vi.
Multiple Biblical verses (discussed above
??) demand that animals be allowed to rest weekly, on the Day of Rest.
3. On top of the Biblical concern for how animals are killed and eaten, the
Torah in these last laws and in additional laws forbids destroying food
resources:
i.
The Torah forbids destroying resources by
killing a dam wastefully – even as one is already eating the chicks that could
have had more chicks in the future but would not have survived anyway had the
mother alone been eaten.
ii.
The Torah forbids killing a calf before the
cow’s milk production is well underway.
iii.
The Torah forbids culling a herd
excessively by killing both the bull/buck and any young males for the same
meat-eating occasion.
iv.
Leviticus 22:24 forbids castrating a bull.
v.
The Torah commands that the nitrogen rich
blood from a slaughtered animal be sprinkled on local altars (Leviticus 17:6)
to be collected in basins or that it be used to “water” the ground outside the
cities’ gates (Deuteronomy 12:15-16) in which orchards are grown (Deuteronomy
20:19-20[11]).
vii.
Deuteronomy 14:8 and Leviticus 11:7 forbid
pig, a scavenging animal, as disgusting.
Along the same lines, Isaiah ch.66 with its heavily ethical message
points out that rich people’s wasteful grain offerings are comparable to eating
pig and piously offering its blood on the altar (Isaiah 66:3). In a water-poor society this disgust and
this comparison makes sense. Such a
society forbids or at least limits raising pigs that greatly (ab)use limited
water, that provide less secondary products than other husbanded animals, and
that interfere with intensive agriculture.[13] Thus the Isaiah passage
compares the rich who excessively offer grain to people who support the raising
of pig that is disgustingly destructive of less powerful people’s food.[14]
viii.
Deuteronomy 22:9 forbids a rich landowner’s
(or a short-sighted poorer farmer’s) attempt to supplant society’s necessary
grain fields with less critical grape vines (see Amos 5:11[15]) by having his tenant farmers growing minimal, sustenance, quantities
of grain in the vineyards.
ix.
Similarly, in the dry lands of
Eretz-Israel, Leviticus 19:19 forbids the soil runoff that is caused when one
sows mixed species that can grow with each other if they take root with
sufficient soil but whose too closely spaced seeds block water absorption and
damage the soil for the future.[16]
x.
In light of the rarity of a meat meal,[17] it is possible that the Torah injunction against cooking a kid in its
mother’s milk (Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21) is also an injunction
against wastefully cooking a culled kid (a source of protein) with its mother’s
milk (a source of protein). In contrast
to hens that are killed only after they cease laying eggs and to roosters that
provide no great advantage on to the homeowner, culling a calf or a kid – even
a male kid – carries a tension. It is
advantageous in that it leaves the mother’s milk available. It is disadvantageous in that involves the
loss of a future male plow animal or of wool.
Thus: the it is possible that the Torah forbids wasting milk to cook a
kid – instead of turning the precious milk into cheese if one has evaluated
that a kid must be killed for the sake of the milk.
4. On top of the Biblical concern both for how animals are killed and eaten
and for conserving resources, Torah also requires people who wish to be holy
and dignified to avoid even merely disgusting experiences.
i.
Leviticus and Deuteronomy describe the
consumption and even touching of rotting carcasses, of carcasses of ill
animals, and of dead swarming creatures as impurifying/abominating and
forbidden (Leviticus 11:20, 29-40, 41-45; Deutoronomy??).[18] Leviticus rules that a person
who ate meat of an animal that died of illness or rotting meat perforce must
wash away that disgusting event:
Any person who eats that which has died [on its own = of illness[19]] or has been torn [by predators] – whether he is a citizen or alien –
must wash his clothes and bathe in water.
He is tameh until the evening [but] then becomes pure. If he does not wash [his clothes] and does
not bathe his flesh, [however,] he bears his sin. (Leviticus 17:15-16)
Leviticus rules that a person who ate of an ill animal or of
disgustingly rotting meat perforce is impure.[20]
ii.
Similarly, the Exodus 23:1-23:19 pericope
concludes its demand to be ethical and to serve only one God with a requirement
to avoid a behavior that is experienced as callous – cooking a kid in its
mother’s milk:
[Ethical Laws]
[Do not worship other gods]
[Direct the agricultural festivals to
God the Master
(i.e. instead of to Baal [= “master”] [21])]
[Sacrifice to God respectfully]
Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.
(Exodus 23:1-23:19)
The conclusion of Exodus 23:1-23:19 indicates that the proscription of
cooking a kid in its mother’s milk; both are demanded in order to help shape
ethical persons.
In parallel to the
Exodus 22:30-23:19 pericope that we just read, adjacsent legal pericope
also both opens with a condemnation of disgusting behavior and closes with a
command that expresses both mercy and conservation of resources:
Anyone who lies
with an animal shall be killed
[Do not worship other gods]
[Ethical Laws]
[Be respectful of God and the leadership]
[Direct the first born produce and
animals to God]
Let them stay with their mothers for the first seven days; only on the
eighth day shall you give it to me. You shall be my holy people. Torn flesh in the field you shall not eat;
you shall throw it to the dogs. (Exodus 22: 18-30[22])
Similarly to
the Exodus 22:1-23:19 pericope, Exodus 22: 18-30 opens with a condemnation
of anyone who disgustingly lies with an animal and closes with a command that
expresses both mercy to the cow mother and ensures that she produces milk
before the calf is culled.
The parallel between these pericopes was also noticed
by Deuteronomy’s reading of Exodus 22:30 and 23:19:[23]
Deuteronomy 14:21 closes a list of forbidden abhorrent animals by juxtaposing
these two broader proscriptions that had framed the Exodus pericopes,[24]
thus showing that it considered them related injunctions that framed and laid
the basis for the moral laws.
[1] Although the word “nefesh” is based on the “Akkadian ‘throat’ or
‘neck’” (Rieber
1980, 15), “nefesh” is also used to express life and breathing
because breathing occurs through the throat.
(For more on the various uses of “nefesh” in the ancient Middle East,
see Starostin 2003.) Thus, we have no
need to need to divide Biblical verses into allegedly radically different uses
of the word “nefesh” to refer to a person or a life and to a throat (contra
Milgrom 1998, 684). In any case: our
point is to discuss the rabbinic understandings of these verses, and the continuous
rabbinic understanding that eating forbidden foods abominates one’s breath is
seen easily in an early Amoraic story about R. Akiva (Avot de-Rabi Natan A
ch.16).
[2] Since classic
halakhicists are among those people who know “with our lives, and live that
knowledge, beyond anything any theory has theorized” (borrowing from MacKinnon
1996, 46; cf. Herbert Loewe in Montefiore and Lowe 1938, 286), I am not
indulging in the intellectualist academic debate about the injunction against
eating an animal’s blood. Academics debate whether Leviticus and Deuteronomy
forbid the blood because all life was regarded as belonging to God, because
blood was sacred, in order to honor the principle of life, or because God is
meant to control life. Academics debate
whether blood is perceived to be symbolic of life or is perceived to be life
itself (Gilders 2004, 16-23). To a halakhicist, a person who focuses on
the underlying experiential reality, all these positions reflect aspects or are
formulations of the same phenomenon.
[3] This careful reading belies the following simplistic condemnation of
animal sacrifices as reflecting an “explosively violent god… who would be
willing to impose a reign of terror on his own people” (Miles 1995, 118-119)
[even as it is true that the Levitical attention to sacrifices addresses a
patriarchial reality (cf. Jay 1992, 94-111)].
It also belies the claim that this law of the blood is not about ethics
(contra Baruch Schwartz [1997, 25] who followed the standard academic approach
to ideas of confusedly identifying the semantic framing of theological
statements (a symbol or belief) as the author’s experiential and purposive idea
(ibid. 23).
[4] Semantically, Leviticus distinguishes between a list of domesticated
animals versus hunted animals and birds.
Thus some critical Biblical scholars see Deuteronomy and Leviticus as
differing, with Leviticus not requiring altar-expiation for certain species and
Deuteronomy exempting a person from altar-expiation on the basis of distance
from the sacred space (Weinfeld 1979; Gerstenberger 1996, 237; Schwartz 1996,
25; et al). However, reading Biblical
laws as contextual examples allows a more accurate reading of this passage in
Leviticus. It allows a reading that
accounts for the fact that Leviticus (or P) actually considers undomesticated
animals no different than domesticated animals (Leviticus 11:2-3, 46 and
Genesis 1:28-30; 8:17-19). If we read
the Levitical law as a contextual example, we see that it is in keeping with
the Deuteronomic law. The only
difference is narrative; Leviticus speaks from within the idealized model of
the Israelites encamped around the desert tabernacle when it discusses people
killing animals for food far from the sacred center versus those that are
killed within sacred civilization.
Accordingly, when Leviticus describes being away from the tabernacle it
describes a situation of hunting wild beasts (a term found in Genesis 7:14, 21;
8:1; 9:10 and Leviticus 5:2; 25:7) and birds.
However, in practice, the application of Leviticus’ model would be to
recognize the profane slaughter of domesticated animals for people who live far
from the sacred center (contra Schwartz 1997, 39; et al). Thus: Leviticus and Deuteronomy merely
differ in style (a common fact missed by biblical scholars – such as Schwartz
1997, 41 – who don’t read Biblical laws as contextual examples). Deuteronomy, which does not utilize the
model of the idealized desert tabernacle, states its contemporary ruling in
directly. A person who lives near the
central sanctuary must offer his meat as a sacrifice but not a person who lives
afar (Deuteronomy 12:5-9).
In fact, if we combine reading
Biblical laws as contextual examples with semiotically sensitive reading we can
explain why both Deuteronomy and Leviticus do not require expiation for fowl
and also why Leviticus describes fowl as hunted – as is also implied in
Deuetronomy 22:6-7 – although most of the fowl consumed in Biblical Jerusalem
was wild fowl that was caught inside the city (cf. Borowski 1997, 158**). Deuteronomy and Leviticus considered fowl
caught in the city no different than hunted fowl – as not needing expiation for
their deaths – because people did not develop sympathetic identification with
these birds. In fact, even
“domesticated” birds such as pigeons (MacDonald 2008, 36) were neither fully domesticated
nor individually recognized (m. Beiza 1:3; t. Beiza 1:10). To state this in
Biblical [P] imagery: birds were created on the same day as the marine
creatures, not only before people but even before the land animals – Genesis
1:20-23 (cf. b. Hullin 27b).
[**My use of Borowski’s
archeological evidence to explain the Levitical law is based on the evidence
for ancient Levitical laws (Kitchen 1960, 4-18 [with reservations]; Milgrom 1983, 26-28; Haran 1995, 195-196; Levine 2006, 11-23) in spite
of linguistic evidence for post-exilic editing of, and Persian influence on,
the final form of Leviticus (Sperling 1998, 116-119 and 1999, 373-385).
[5] Both Leviticus and Deuteronomy do not mention any atonement through
pouring the blood into the earth. It is
not clear to me whether no atonement is provided according to these sources or
whether atonement is provided but is not discussed in light of the opposition
to people sacrificing their animals to the underground demons (Leviticus 17:7;
Deuteronomy 32:16-17). [Cf. the issue
of libating to God (or gods) by pouring an offering directly onto the ground
instead of on a central altar – Rubenstein 1994, 435-437 and fns.].
[6] For example, see Lev. 1:5; 1:11; 3:8: 3:13; 4:15; 4:24; 14:5 and
Deuteronomy 12:15-16, 22-24.
[7] Slicing an animal’s throat inherently requires one to hold the
animal. Holding an animal offers a
better guarantee of humane slaughter than other methods that can be quick if
performed precisely but have no built in motivation for precise performance.
[8] Cf. 1 Samuel 14:31-35.
[9] The connection between psychologically/ethically dark behavior and dark
magic is missed by Eliav Shochetman (Shochetman 2008, 31-43).
[10] It is difficult to read the verse as stating “you shall not boil a
young goat which is at its mother’s milk” (Schorch 2010, 123). Admittedly, one might consider arguing that
Biblical cultures, which in all written layers milked their female cattle and
sheep, kept calves alive for a year so that the cows would continue to produce
milk (on this issue in milk production, see Amoroso and Jewell 1963, 126-137). Indeed, this could be supported by an
ancient source describing the ritual eating a year old lamb (Exodus 12:5). However, such reading would conflict with
Biblical laws that that permitted culling calves after seven days (Exodus 22:29
and Leviticus 22:26); these laws suggest that a cow’s milk production was
maintained after the first few days in spite of culling just as it is in the Middle East today – let alone
goat’s milk if only one kid is killed out of a mother’s possibly two or three
kids (Niemann 2013, 145). Thus, it seems more accurate to
interpret this legal passage in line with the other more contemporaneous
Biblical laws, as permitting the removal of the kid from its mother’s teat. Furthermore: reading the passage as referring
to an injunction against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk is in line with the
evidence of all the later post-Biblical traditions. Only textual scholars who ignore historical questions of how a
supposed erroneous unanimous reading would have arisen in a living culture can
overlook this last piece of evidence.
Similarly, other scholars (such as Zev Farber [n.d.]) have focused on
Exodus 34:26b to read this law as a law that originally had nothing to do with
cooking/eating and had no connection to the injunction against eating a torn
animal carcass. They view Deuteronomy
14:21’s injunction against cooking a kid as a creative misreading of the
original Exodus injunction. From a
critical perspective, however, such claim fails on two basic points:
1. Since Exodus
34:18-26 is a later reworking of Exodus 22:31-23:19, one should turn
to the latter pericope with its complete literary context to discuss the
meaning of the injunction.
2. Since Exodus
34:18-26’s rewording is also influenced by late Deuteronomic and Priestly
sources (Gesundheit 2012, 165), Exodus 34:26b aso knew Deuteronomy
14:21’s understanding that the injunction is against cooking/eating.
Most
problematically, however, these scholars have also failed to realize that
Biblical “ritual” laws reflected a group’s living practice as opposed to being
ephemereal texts that could simply be misinterpreted.
[11] Cf. m. Yoma 5:6 (and m. Midot 3:2).
[12] These practical considerations are still not discussed in recent
critical Biblical scholarship (such as Owens 2010, 25).
[13] Hesse and Wapnish 1998, 125-126.
[14] Hesse and Wapnish 1998, 125-126.
[15] Coote 1981, 33-34. Compare
Hosea’s condemnation of both extravagant wearing of wool and linen and
extravagant drinking and growing of wine (2:10-15) and Amos’ condemnation of
the rich who let the poor fail as they drink wine excessively (6:4-7).
[16] In line with this injunction being a problem only in dry climates, the
Tannaim ruled that it does not apply outside Eretz-Israel (m. Kiddushin 1:9) or
not Biblically (m. Orla 3:9).
[17] Exodus 16:12; 2 Samuel 12:1-5; Amos 6:4; Daniel 10:3.
[18] For a discussion if which dead animals Levitcus forbade but not view as
impurifying, see Milgrom 1992, 107-111 and Milgrom 1998, 681-683.
[19] In the wild in which predators
seek out weak animals, an herbivore that dies “naturally” does not do so out of
old age. Even as regards farm animals:
since owners do not inefficiently feed the animals when the animals grow old,
an animal that dies “naturally” does not simply die of old age. That being the case, such dead animal is
viewed as having died of illness.
[20] Exodus 16:12; 2 Samuel 12:1-5; Amos 6:4; Daniel 10:3.
[21] This word play was already noticed by Cassuto (1953, 211).
[22] Exodus 22:29 and 22:30 are read together in light of Ezekiel 44:30-31.
[23] Deuteronomy presents itself as Moses’ repetition and paraphrasing of
earler Biblical laws, as later than the Exodus pericope. Similarly, critical Biblical scholarship
dates these Exodus verses are part of the earlier Covenant Code – even those
scholars who date the code to the Neo-Assyrian period [Wright 2009, 356-358].)
[24] Because David Daube did not notice this framing, he erroneously
distinguished between the Exodus and Deuteronomy injunctions against cooking a
kid in milk (Daube 1947, 84).
