Reading Exodus and came across this verse twice and I could not make any sense of it, so I started to look it up.
Play the theme music from the movie "Jaws"!
Hours later I found that the verse also occurs in Deuteronomy and I found that a lot of people have a lot of opinions.
Some thought it was connected to an incantation and false god ritual that would guarantee a good crop the next year. Turns out there is no factual basis for assuming such a ritual ever existed.
Some thought it was to teach civility, because it just seems cruel to use the mother's own milk to cook her kid in.
Some thought it had to do with a principle in scripture of, no mixture, so you shouldn't mix the milk, meant to give life to the kid with the death and subsequent cooking of the kid.
Some thought the translation had been messed up and it should have said, wait until the kid is weaned from the mother, but when you start to say the text is wrong you go down a bad road.
One guy connected all three passages to the context of going up to the feasts and so it was a prohibition associated with festival sacrifices whether done by the person or purchased by the person.
Bottom line, nobody knows, but Jehovah said it, the words themselves are very clear so there should be obedience.
One thing productive did come out of it. With the destruction of the temple and the sacrifice all sorts of adjustments had to be made to the Jewish religion and this verse was used as the basis for a whole lot of rules about keeping milk and any dairy product separate from meat. (No cheeseburger for you!) That was not hard enough so you had to buy separate cooking utensils for dairy and meat so that they would never be cooked or served on the same thing because what if some tiny drop of milk was still on the plate! But it was also used to say that you could not sit down at the same table with someone who was combining those two, so it took the separation of the Jewish people out and beyond the intent of God. Humans have a tendency to make coming to God way way way harder than He intended it to be. And that is the lesson I got hours and hours later after looking up this simple verse.
Play the theme music from the movie "Jaws"!
Hours later I found that the verse also occurs in Deuteronomy and I found that a lot of people have a lot of opinions.
Some thought it was connected to an incantation and false god ritual that would guarantee a good crop the next year. Turns out there is no factual basis for assuming such a ritual ever existed.
Some thought it was to teach civility, because it just seems cruel to use the mother's own milk to cook her kid in.
Some thought it had to do with a principle in scripture of, no mixture, so you shouldn't mix the milk, meant to give life to the kid with the death and subsequent cooking of the kid.
Some thought the translation had been messed up and it should have said, wait until the kid is weaned from the mother, but when you start to say the text is wrong you go down a bad road.
One guy connected all three passages to the context of going up to the feasts and so it was a prohibition associated with festival sacrifices whether done by the person or purchased by the person.
Bottom line, nobody knows, but Jehovah said it, the words themselves are very clear so there should be obedience.
One thing productive did come out of it. With the destruction of the temple and the sacrifice all sorts of adjustments had to be made to the Jewish religion and this verse was used as the basis for a whole lot of rules about keeping milk and any dairy product separate from meat. (No cheeseburger for you!) That was not hard enough so you had to buy separate cooking utensils for dairy and meat so that they would never be cooked or served on the same thing because what if some tiny drop of milk was still on the plate! But it was also used to say that you could not sit down at the same table with someone who was combining those two, so it took the separation of the Jewish people out and beyond the intent of God. Humans have a tendency to make coming to God way way way harder than He intended it to be. And that is the lesson I got hours and hours later after looking up this simple verse.
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