I’ve never seen a recipe for goat boiled in its mother’s milk. For good reason, because the Law of Moses expressly prohibits this practice. Of the many do’s and don’t in the Book of the Law, this one presents as one of the strangest. Why the command you shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk?

Competing theories surround this teaching. One view stresses the value of life, as it would be improper to use the substance meant to nurture and sustain a young animal (its mother’s milk) to cook it after its death. It represents an unnatural mingling.

Other scholars believe this practice was a Canaanite fertility rite, and the command was designed to prevent Israelites from adopting such customs. God told Moses that the Israelites should not follow any of the worship practices of the peoples he drove from the land (Deuteronomy 12:2-4). These nations worshipped demonic entities, gods who cared nothing for human life. No hint of these religions should remain if the land was to be set aside for the Lord’s people.

While this represents an arcane issue from the Old Testament, it stands as a reminder of the holiness of God. The nations in the promised land moved so far from any semblance of worship of the true God that the Lord scourged the place clean. God commanded the people of Israel, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

God is holy, and God cares about my everyday. He wants my eyes turned toward him, not to the practices of the world. As I do so he brings the best to my life, and if I never eat young goat boiled in its mother’s milk, so much the better.

Deuteronomy 14:21; Leviticus 19:2

Photo by Andreea Pop