Font Size
No blood may be eaten, either directly or in meat. The essential and the theological reason for this standard is given in v.11. This verse is important, for it is the only word in the sacrificial legislation that gives any indication of why blood has the power to expiate sins. The primary reason rests in God’s design; God has given it this power. The essential reason is that blood carries the life force of a person. Ancient Hebrews placed the locus of a person’s life in the breath and in the blood. People die when they stop breathing; so, too, their life flows from them as they lose their blood. Of these two loci of life, blood, of course, is the more tangible. So the blood used in the sacrificial rituals represents the life of the slain animal. God accepts this blood in place of the person who has forfeited his life by sinning. Blood also serves to cleanse the altar from the pollution caused by that person’s sins. Blood has the power solely because of God’s mercy in providing his people a way to remove their sins so that they may continue to worship him.
This categorical law against eating blood means that the blood of a clean wild animal has to be drained and covered before an Israelite can eat the meat of game. Meat from an animal found dead, whether it died as a result of mauling by another animal or naturally, can be eaten. But the person, whether an Israelite or a resident alien, who eats that meat becomes ritually unclean and must wash his clothes and wait until evening before becoming clean again.