Deuteronomy 14:21

Ye shall not eat of any thing which dieth of itself Lit. any carcase, anything found dead, without being slain by the finder. There is a possible case in Doughty, ii. 129; but usually when an Arab sees his camel must die, in consequence of an accident, he slays it forthwith.

thou mayest give it unto the stranger The gçror foreigner settled in Israel (see on Deuteronomy 1:16), distinct from the following foreigner, not settled, but trading, with Israel.

E, Exodus 22:30 (31) enjoins that flesh torn of beastsshall be given to dogs; but H, Leviticus 17:15, enjoins that neither that which dies of itselfnor what is torn of beastsshall be eaten either by Israelite or by gêr: obviously a later law, when the position of the gêrwas more established in Israel and he was brought further into religious communion.

for thou art an holy people As in Deuteronomy 14:2.

See further on Unclean and Clean Foods, Appendix I.

Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk So E, Exodus 23:19, and J, Exodus 34:26. The prohibition has a natural seemliness like those laws in H, Leviticus 22:27 f., which forbid the sacrifice of a calf, lamb, or kid till it has been seven days under the dam, and the sacrifice of the dam and young together [134]. But there must be other motives behind the law. That it occurs among laws on ritual implies that the practice it vetoes had a sacramental meaning (as Calvin on Exodus 33:19 points out); that both in E and J it immediately follows the offering of first-fruits suggests that this meaning was connected with the security of the harvest or of the fertility of the soil: -a superstitious usage of some of the Gentiles, who, "tis said, at the end of their harvest seethed a kid in its dam's milk, and sprinkled that milk pottage in a magical way upon their gardens and fields to make them the more fruitful the next year [135]."

[134] Some have even supposed that it was meant to exclude kids from use as food till they were weaned, which is neither -agreeable to reason" (Calvin) nor to H's law quoted above.

[135] M. Henry on Exodus 23:19. He may have got this from Maimonides through Bochart, or through Spencer whose Leges Hebraeorumwas published some years before his own commentary. W. R. Smith (Ret. Sem. 204 n.) suggests that as certain primitive peoples appear to regard milk as equivalent to blood, the seething of a kid in its mother's milk would involve the partakers of the flesh in the guilt of -eating with the blood." Calvin had made the same suggestion with a more apposite emphasis: -God would not admit a monstrous thing in His sacrifice, that a kid's flesh should be cooked in its dam's milk, and thus, as it were, in its ownblood." From its wording this law cannot mean the prohibition of anymilk in sacrifice (to-day in Arabia sheep and goats are said to taste better when boiled in milk, Musil, Ethn. Ber.149, and are frequently so cooked), yet it is significant that milk nowhere appears among the festal offerings of Israel, probably because of its ready fermentation (W. R. Smith).