“However, you may slaughter and eat meat wherever you live and whenever you want, in keeping with the degree to which Adonai your God has blessed you. The unclean and the clean may eat it, as if it were gazelle or deer.”-Deuteronomy 12:15
From verse 15, the Lord introduces a new and radical shift that was to be effective immediately once the Hebrews had set up life in the Promised Land.
What revolutionary change am I talking about?
I’m talking about the new rule that Israel would be allowed to eat meat MINUS having to first sacrifice it at the Tabernacle.
Up until this point in the Torah, any meat from DOMESTIC animals the Israelites wanted to eat had to first be part of a ritual sacrifice that was officiated over by a priest.
Notice I emphasized “domestic” animals.
Why?
Because Israel had always been allowed to eat undomesticated animals as long as they met the Kosher conditions of being creatures that chewed the cud and had a cloven hoof.
A deer is a good example of an undomesticated or wild kosher animal.
However, the animals that made up the flocks and herds that came along with Israel on their exodus from Egypt were all “domestic” animals meaning they were ritually pure.
“Ritually pure” simply meant it was okay to offer them up to HASHEM as altar sacrifices.
However, Kosher wild animals (such as deer) were absolutely NOT allowed to be sacrificed but they were allowed to be eaten.
Having said that, there was precious little if any wild game in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula and the Sinai desert area where Israel was residing.
It would have been okay to chomp on deer meet but there was just hardly any available.
It would have been considered one of the rarest of treats, a privilege most families never had the chance to enjoy.
On the other hand, wild birds would have been more readily available.
It was actually quite normal for huge flocks of quail to fly over the Sinai desert and then allow themselves to drop to the ground for a rest before taking up flight again.
Recall, God used this phenomenon to His advantage when He fed the Israelites quail meat in response to their grumbling.
A quail is one of those creatures that would fall under the classification of a wild Kosher animal and thus was permissible to be eaten minus being sacrificed.
So the new rule being established here in Deuteronomy 12 is that the Lord is drawing a line between eating meat to satisfy one’s hunger and offering up meat as a sacrifice.
Here’s the thing.
We need to understand that God operated as He did for Israel’s benefit (just as He operates for our benefit now) even if they didn’t recognize what the benefit was at the time.
During the wilderness journey, one of the practical reasons why the Lord required that Israel first sacrifice a domestic animal before eating it was because it prevented their herds and flocks from being decimated.
It took a heck of a lot of trouble to haul an animal all the way up to the Tabernacle to slaughtered…
…and even after going through all that trouble, the worshipper only received a portion of the meat back as food.
If on a given day everyone suddenly decided to eat meat, the long lines of people that resulted would have been worse than the opening night of Star Wars at a movie theater.
Therefore, as much as the people desired meat, the truth was it wasn’t eaten too often.
In addition, there were a couple of other pain-in-the-neck things one had to consider when consuming meat.
For instance, meat went bad after only a couple of hours.
Therefore, after being slaughtered it had to be cooked and completely eaten pretty much right there on the spot.
There was no storing meat over several days.
I’m not saying the ancient Hebrews didn’t know how to dry and cure meat for preservation purposes.
They did understand it and implemented it at times but…
…it had to be at a location where that was possible and even then there just weren’t that many animals available.
Now why do you think God gave these instructions in the first place?
The answer is simple.
It’s because the people were doing the exact opposite.
The Torah is really a mirror of our rebellious tendencies.
The people craved meat and as a result did NOT obey God’s instructions concerning first sacrificing domestic animals before eating them.
However, now that Israel is about to transform from a mob of Bedouin wanderers to a settled people with an abundance of grazing land that will enable them to grow their herds and flocks to huge numbers, there was no longer any risk of their flocks being decimated.
As a result of this change, God is now telling Israel they can help themselves to as much meat as they can get their hands on.
But, but, but…
…even with this new found freedom…
…there were still some conditions that Israel had to meet!
We’ll deal with those the next time we meat…
…er…
…I meant “meet”.
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