You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk
You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk
— Exodus 34:26b
Many of you know that Jews do not mix meat and dairy. It’s because of this one verse. They are so zealous to keep all the commandments, even this one, that they try to make sure that the two don’t even mix in their stomachs. (I believe the rule is that you have to separate eating meat or dairy by 3 to 6 hours.) I’m not going to down this… but I think it’s interesting.
What it speaks to me is about treating animals with consideration and kindness. What if the mother knew that you boiled her first-born baby in her own milk? I remember once hearing of someone who murdered a couple of children. After killing them, he sat down and at their Happy Meals. Somehow, the coldbloodedness of that just makes it worse. …and I think that’s the kind of thing that this verse talks about.
I saw a documentary on feedlots. Cattle belong in fields and pastures, but feedlots take them to a pen, with waaaay too many other cows, and keeps them there from birth until the slaughterhouse. Food is trucked in. The whole thing is just sick. What’s worse is that the cattle are fed corn… which isn’t well suited to their stomachs and makes them prone to disease.
This practice is economically feasible because (a) antibiotics have been able to keep down the disease and (b) energy costs have been low. It’s been cheaper to bring the food to the cows rather than take the cows to the food (pasture). When one (or both) of those changes, feedlots will start to disappear.
So… that’s one thing to be thankful for with rising gas prices. 
[Edit] My buddy Steve left a comment with an awesome link to The Meatrix Check it out! – gabe 5/22/08
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Check this http://www.themeatrix.com/
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Just wanted to back you up re: feedlots
@Steve: Awesome link! Thanks 1M!
But don’t forget the sexual perversion and magic. My recollection of my understanding (yeah, that just happened) is that this was a fertility rite–which is sick all sorts of ways. And, in addition to that weirdness, the practice, to me, is just one more manifestation of our tendency to want to capture/extract and exploit the mysteries of life and youth.
When I think boiling a kid in it’s mother’s milk, I think Jon Benet Ramsey (I hope this offends somebody: there are few things more disturbing to me than the idea of young girls in faux adult beauty pageants), the epidemic of pedophilia, our perpetual cultural adolescence, etc. This also reminds me of “Interview with a Vampire.”
I’ll take ancient near eastern religious abominations with children for 200, Alex. The answer: he was the god of whom it was said “you shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire.”
@Joel: Thanks! I didn’t realize that there was a specific ritual that God was commanding against. I found a few links on it:
Kosher [Seed of Abraham]
Exodus 34 by Matthew Henrey [Blue Letter Bible]
<a href=’
Adam Clark on Exodus 23:19 [godrules.net]
This explains the context of Ex 34:26 a little better, too. Otherwise, it just seems to be randomly thrown in. It’s saying, “Celebrate the feast of the first fruits… but don’t do it this way.”
However, I don’t think ‘kid’ means ‘child.’ I think it’s clearly talking about an animal… and therefore a little different from offering children to the Asherim. (sp?)
On the “kid” thing, absolutely; I’m not suggesting that it means anything other than livestock–at least not literally. What I mean to say is that it reflects a larger culture of perversion and power mongering. I would (and I suppose I kinda already did) apply “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk” metaphorically to humans and I do think there are clear principles there that God meant us to read not only relative to the ancient near eastern culture but to humanity generally.
That’s one of those things about the kashrut: it has so many dimensions. I’m particularly suspicious when folks tell me that it was just God’s way of securing the physical survival of His people, teaching them hygiene, etc. I think it was partly that, but there is so much more meant in it. And much of that would have been very clear to the original audience. Like the sideburns thing.
And, as the author on one of your links says (I’m not saying I agree with everything he says, but just a particular aspect of an angle–how’s that for qualified?), such an arcane labyrinth of tradition arises that tends to distract from the main point. The Sabbath is a key example. Religious folks had turned it into a burden. Jesus says “Relax [pun intended]. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Lest we point our fingers at the Jews, there are plenty of Christian pharisees and I think we all tend to harbor a pharisaical spirit on one or another set of issues, even if we might mostly dodge the label.
The question is “Who is Moloch?” I was gonna go off on Asherah and the Baalim and additional instances of sexual sickness (disturbingly relevant to our contemporary setting) but decided not to. Indeed, I was kind of making an obtuse connection (re the kid issue) to an instance where actual human children were involved in the ritual–whether to the point of death or just somehow symbolically is debated (to me, in terms of the spiritual impact, we’re better off considering the sacrifice “actual” whether children are physically burnt up or not, especially if we recognize that we offer our kids to Moloch even today). I guess that’s part of my justification (not that I really think it’s needed
) for applying the kid seething in milk the way I do, because it is in many ways so similar to giving children to Moloch by fire. But broiled not boiled; human not goat.
I admit, too, that I tend to the Freudian angle–because I think that sex is important and our misunderstanding, and, frankly, devaluation, of it is obviously a big part of what’s wrong with our culture.
In context, as you imply, the more primary meaning is probably, “Your success doesn’t come from voodoo or from these vile gods your neighbors worship. You prosper by my grace.”
On another (and, perhaps, more direct?) tangent, it makes sense to me that most of us go through a phase of fasting (or, sometimes, a permanent call away from) certain aspects of our old life, not because the things we did were wrong per se, but because we wrongly ascribed them power (whether that means “any,” “the wrong kind,” “for the wrong reasons,” etc.), on the one hand, and because they were just a meaningless habit on the other. Like a batter who crosses himself and tugs his crotch in a particular way each time he steps into the box. In my experience, the LORD is all about not only shattering the idols but paring away the detritus so that we begin to see true identity, His and ours.
It’s sad that we seem always to answer the destruction of one idol with the construction of another and that we replace one batch of rotting matter with another that is equally (or surpassingly) vile and decayed.