Blood

Blood (דָּם, dam; αϊvμα: both occasionally used, by Hebraism, in the plural with a sing. sense), the red fluid circulating in the veins of men and animals. The term is employed in Scripture in a variety of senses.

1. As Food. — To blood is ascribed in Scripture the mysterious sacredness which belongs to life, and God reserved it to Himself when allowing man the dominion over and the use of the lower animals for food, etc. (See Thomson, Land and Book, i, 136.) In Ge 9:4, where the use of animal food is allowed, it is first absolutely forbidden to eat "flesh with its soul, its blood;" which expression, were it otherwise obscure, is explained by the mode in which the same terms are employed in De 12:23. In the Mosaic law the prohibition is repeated with frequency and emphasis, although it is generally introduced in connection with sacrifices, as in Le 3:7; Le 7:26 (in both which places blood is coupled in the prohibition with the fat of the victims); 17:10-14; 19:2; De 12:16-23; De 15:23. In cases where the prohibition is introduced in connection with the lawful and unlawful articles of diet, the reason which is generally assigned in the text is that " the blood is the soul," and it is ordered that it be poured on the ground like water. But where it is introduced in reference to the portions of the victim which were to be offered to the Lord, then the text, in addition to the former reason, insists that "the blood expiates by the soul" (Le 17:11; Le 12). This strict injunction not only applied to the Israelites, but even to the strangers residing among them. The penalty assigned to its transgression was the being "cut off from the people," by which the punishment of death appears to be intended (comp. Heb 10:28), although it is difficult to ascertain whether it was inflicted by the sword or by stoning. It is observed by Michaelis (iMos. Recht. 4:45) that the blood of fishes does not appear to be interdicted. The words in Le 7:26, only expressly mention that of birds and cattle. This accords, however, with the reasons assigned for the prohibition of blood, inasmuch as fishes could not be offered to the Lord, although they formed a significant offering in heathen religions. To this is to be added that the apostles and elders, assembled in council at Jerusalem, when desirous of settling the extent to which the ceremonial observances were binding upon the converts to Christianity, renewed the injunction to abstain from blood, and coupled it with things offered to idols (Ac 15:29). It is perhaps worthy of notice here that Mohammed, while professing to abrogate some of the dietary restrictions of the Jewish law (which he asserts were imposed on account of the sins of the Jews, Sura 4:158). still enforces, among others, abstinence from blood and from things offered to idols (Koran, Sur. v, 4; 6:146, ed. Flugel).

In direct opposition to this emphatic prohibition of blood in the Mosaic law, the customs of uncivilized heathens sanctioned the cutting of slices from the living animal, and the eating of the flesh while quivering with life and dripping with blood. Even Saul's army committed this barbarity, as we read in 1Sa 14:32; and the prophet also lays it to the charge of the Jews in Eze 33:25. This practice, according to Bruce's testimony, exists at present among the Abyssinians. Moreover, pagan religions, and that of the Phoenicians among the rest, appointed the eating and drinking of blood, mixed with wine, as a rite of idolatrous worship, and especially in the ceremonial of swearing. To this the passage in Ps 16:4 appears to allude (comp. Michaelis, Critisth. Colleg. p. 108, where several testimonies on this subject are collected).