For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off.
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.
Commenting on Leviticus 17:10-16
For it is the life of all flesh,.... Of every animal: the blood of it is for the life thereof; for the production, preservation, and continuance of life; that on which life depends, as Jarchi observes: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; of beasts or birds, whose flesh was fit for food; but...
Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh - Independently of the moral reasons given above, we may add, 1. That blood, being highly alkalescent, especially in hot climates, is subject to speedy putrefaction. 2. That it affords a gross nutriment, being very difficult of digestion, so much so that bull's blood was used in ancient times as poison, "Its extreme viscidity rendering...