Leviticus 17:10 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Leviticus 17:10
And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.
a man as an individual or a male person · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular absolute
house
מִבֵּ֣יתmi.Beit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵ֗לYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
strangers
הַגֵּר֙ha.Ger
H1616
properly · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
sojourn
הַגָּ֣רha.Gar
H1481
properly · definite article + verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
among
בְּתוֹכָ֔םbe.to.Kham
H8432
a bisection · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
eateth
יֹאכַ֖לyo.Khal
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
blood
דָּ֑םDam
H1818
blood (as that which when shed causes death) of man or… · noun, common masculine singular absolute
set
וְנָתַתִּ֣יve.na.ta.Ti
H5414
to give · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 1st person common singular
face
פָנַ֗יfa.Nai
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
soul
בַּנֶּ֙פֶשׁ֙ba.Ne.fesh
H5315
properly · preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
eateth
הָאֹכֶ֣לֶתha.'o.Khe.let
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · definite article + verb, qal active participle, feminine singular absolute
blood
הַדָּ֔םha.Dam
H1818
blood (as that which when shed causes death) of man or… · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
off
וְהִכְרַתִּ֥יve.hikh.ra.Ti
H3772
to cut (off · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 1st person common singular
among
מִקֶּ֥רֶבmi.Ke.rev
H7130
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
people
עַמָּֽהּ'a.Mah
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Leviticus 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the bloo…
Leviticus 3:17 It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.
Deuteronomy 12:16 Only ye shall not eat the blood; ye shall pour it upon the earth as water.
Deuteronomy 12:23 Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.
Genesis 9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
Leviticus 7:26-27 Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings.
Leviticus 26:17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee wh…
1 Samuel 14:33 Then they told Saul, saying, Behold, the people sin against the LORD, in that they eat with the blood. And he said, Ye have transgressed: ro…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Leviticus 17:10–end
We have here, I. A repetition and confirmation of the law against eating blood. We have met with this prohibition twice before in the levitical law (Lev 3:17; Lev 7:26), besides the place it had in the precepts of Noah, Gen 9:4. But here, 1. The prohibition is repeated again and again, and reference had to the former laws to this purport (Lev 17:12): I said to the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood; and again (Lev 17:14), You shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh. A great stress is laid upon it, as a law which has more in it than at first view one would think. 2. It is made binding, not only on the house of Israel, but on the strangers that sojourned among them (Lev 17:10…
I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people--The face of God is often used in Scripture to denote His anger (Psa 34:16; Rev 6:16; Eze 38:18). The manner in which God's face would be set against such an offender was, that if the crime were public and known, he was condemned to death; if it were secret, vengeance would overtake him. (See on Gen 9:4). But the practice against which the law is here pointed was an idolatrous rite. The Zabians, or worshippers of the heavenly host, were accustomed, in sacrificing animals, to pour out the blood and eat a part of the flesh at the place where the blood was poured out (and sometimes the blood…
They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils - They shall not sacrifice לשעירים lasseirim, to the hairy ones, to goats. The famous heathen god, Pan, was represented as having the posteriors, horns, and ears of a goat; and the Mendesians, a people of Egypt, had a deity which they worshipped under this form. Herodotus says that all goats were worshipped in Egypt, but the he-goat particularly. It appears also that the different ape and monkey species were objects of superstitious worship; and from these sprang, not only Mendes and Jupiter Ammon, who was worshipped under the figure of a ram, but also Pan and the Sileni, with the innumerable herd of those imaginary beings, satyrs, dryads…
The Church Fathers
What does the Scripture say when it prohibits eating the blood: The soul of all flesh is its blood? The entire passage explains it this way: If any man of the children of Israel or any of the proselytes living among you eats any blood, I will put my face on the soul that eats blood and exterminate it from its people. For the soul of all flesh is its blood. And I gave it to you to make atonement for your souls; for his blood will serve as expiation for the soul. That is why I said to the children of Israel: "No one among you will eat blood; nor the proselyte who lives among you will eat blood. " If we say that blood is the soul of an animal, must we also admit that blood is the soul of man? No way. Then, why does not the text say: The soul of all flesh of an animal is its blood, but says: The soul of all flesh is its blood? It is evident that the word "of all flesh" also includes the flesh of man. But, since there is something vital in the blood, because through it one lives, especially in the actual flesh, and the blood is diffused through the whole body through all the veins, is it perhaps called soul to the own body life, not the life that comes out of the body, but the life that ends with death? With this expression we say that this life is temporary, not eternal; mortal, not immortal, being immortal the nature of the soul, which is taken by the angels from the bosom of Abraham, and to which it is said: Today you will be with me in paradise (Lc 23,43), and that it burned in the torments of hell (Cf Lc 16,23). According to this meaning for which we also call this temporary life a soul, the Apostle said the following: For I do not consider my soul valuable to me (Acts 20,24). Here he wants to show that he was willing even to die for the Gospel. Because, according to the meaning by which the soul is called what comes out of the body, the Apostle made it all the more valuable the greater merit it gained him. There are other expressions similar to these. Thus, this temporal life is contained mostly in the body by blood. But what do these words mean: I have given it to you next to the altar of God, to make atonement for your soul? (Lv 17,11) It is as if the soul made atonement for the soul. Does blood atonement for blood perhaps, as if we had to be preoccupied with our blood when we want to make atonement for our soul? This is an absurdity. But it is much more…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Blood — (1.) As food, prohibited in Gen. 9:4, where the use of animal food is first allowed. Comp. Deut. 12:23; Lev. 3:17; 7:26; 17:10-14. The injunction to abstain from blood is renewed in the decree of the…
Clean — The various forms of uncleanness according to the Mosaic law are enumerated in Lev. 11-15; Num. 19. The division of animals into clean and unclean was probably founded on the practice of sacrifice.…
Unclean Meats — These were things strangled, or dead of themselves or through beasts or birds of prey; whatever beast did not both part the hoof and chew the cud; and certain other smaller animals rated as “creeping…
Strangers In Israel · Laws respecting: Not to eat blood — Laws respecting: Not to eat blood
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel,.... That is by birth an Israelite, of every age, sex, or condition, as before:
or of the strangers that sojourn among you; proselytes of righteousness, for the following law was only obligatory on such, and upon Israelites, as appears from its being lawful to give or sell that which dies of itself to a stranger, that is, to a proselyte of the gate, or to an Heathen, Deuteronomy 14:21,
that eateth any manner of blood; that is, as Ben Gersom interprets it, of beasts and birds, concerning which the prohibition only is, according to him; for as for the blood of others there was no obligation, nor were any guilty on account of them; particular…
Leviticus 17:10-14
10. And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.
10. Quicunque e domo Israel, et e peregrinis qui peregrinantur in medio eorum, comederit ullum sanguinem, ponam faciem meam in animam quae comederit sanguinem, et excidam eam e medio populi sui.
11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
11. Quia anima carnis in sanguine est: ego autem dedi ill…
To this there are appended three laws, which are kindred in their nature, and which were binding not only upon the Israelites, but also upon the foreigners who dwelt in the midst of them.
Lev 17:8-12
Lev 17:8, Lev 17:9 contain the command, that whoever offered a burnt-offering of slain-offering, and did not bring it to the tabernacle to prepare it for Jehovah there, was to be exterminated; a command which involved the prohibition of sacrifice in any other place whatever, and was given, as the further extension of this law in Deut 12 clearly proves, for the purpose of suppressing the disposition to offer sacrifice to other gods, as well as in other places. In Lev 17:10-14 the prohibition of t…
be unfaithful (Hebrew zanah, “commit fornication”): Israel was not to worship any god but the Lord (Exod 20:3). Israel’s covenant relationship to the Lord was even compared to a marriage (see Hos 1:2), and worshiping other gods could be described as spiritual adultery. In addition, many of the Canaanite religions were fertility cults. This verb reflects the prostitution conducted at Canaanite shrines to induce fertility in the land through rites of magic involving sexual intercourse. • The Hebrew word translated goat idols is the plural for a male goat. In the ancient world, the male goat was often a symbol of fertility or of a god of the underworld. During the reign of Jeroboam I, many Levi…
כל דם [WHATSOEVER MAN THERE BE … THAT EATETH] ANY BLOOD — Since Scripture states (v. 11) “[for it is the blood] with the life that maketh expiation", I might think that one is liable only for eating the blood of consecrated animals, (i. e. sacrifices), for it is only the blood of such animals that makes expiation. Scripture therefore states here “[Whatsoever man there be … that eateth] any blood [I will cut him off from among his people]" (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Section 7 3).
ונתתי פני I WILL SET פני [AGAINST THAT SOUL] — פני is taken to mean as much as פנאי שלי My leisure — i.e. I will turn away (פונה) from all My affairs and concern Myself only with him (Sifra, Acharei Mot, Section 7 4; cf.…
