Exodus 22:31

And ye shall be holy men unto me,.... They were so by God's act of election, not special and particular, but general and national; choosing and separating them to be an holy people to him, above all

And ye shall be holy men unto me: neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs. Ye shall be holy men unto me.

Ye shall be holy, i.e. separated from all filthiness, both moral and ceremonial. Neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts; partly, because the blood was not taken out of it; partly, because the clean beast was ceremonially defiled by the touch of the unclean; and partly, to beget in them a detestation of cruelty, even in the beasts, and much more in men.

Exodus 22:31 And ye shall be holy men unto me: neither shall ye eat [any] flesh [that is] torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs.Ver. 31. Holy men.] Heb., Men of holiness, which should run through our whole lives, as the woof doth through the web.

(31) Ye shall be holy men unto me.—Compare Exodus 19:6. The holiness really desired was holiness of heart and spirit. Outward ordinances could not effect this; but, to keep the thought perpetually before- men’s minds, a network of external obligations was devised, whereof a specimen is given in the law which follows. The flesh of an animal torn by a carnivorous beast would be doubly unclean: (1) By contact with the unclean carnivorous beast; and (2) through not having all the blood properly drained from it. It was therefore not to be eaten by a Hebrew. Ye shall cast it to the dogs—i.e., ye shall do this rather than eat it. The flesh might probably be given, or even sold, to an alien. (Compare Deuteronomy 14:21.)

Verse 31. Neither shall ye eat - flesh - torn of beasts in the field] This has been supposed to be an ordinance against eating flesh cut off the animal while alive, and so the Syriac seems to have understood it. If we can credit Mr. Bruce, this is a frequent custom in Abyssinia; but human nature revolts from it. The reason of the prohibition against eating the flesh of animals that had been torn, or as we term it worried in the field, appears to have been simply this: That the people might not eat the blood, which in this case must be coagulated in the flesh; and the blood, being the life of the beast, and emblematical of the blood of the covenant, was ever to be held sacred, and was prohibited from the days of Noah. See Clarke on Genesis 9:4. IN the conclusion of this chapter we see the grand reason of all the ordinances and laws which it contains. No command was issued merely from the sovereignty of God. He gave them to the people as restraints on disorderly passions, and incentives to holiness; and hence he says, Ye shall be holy men unto me. Mere outward services could neither please him nor profit them; for from the very beginning of the world the end of the commandment was love out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned, 1 Timothy 1:5. And without these accompaniments no set of religious duties, however punctually performed, could be pleasing in the sight of that God who seeks truth in the inward parts, and in whose eyes the faith that worketh by love is alone valuable. A holy heart and a holy, useful life God invariably requires in all his worshippers. Reader, how standest thou in his sight?

29–31. A group of fundamental ceremonial injunctions. Jehovah’s customary due from the first annual produce of the threshing-floor and the wine-press to be promptly paid: firstborn males, both of men and animals, to be given to Him; flesh torn of beasts not to be eaten. The laws are stated here tersely and generally: more detailed, and sometimes discrepant, regulations are given in the later codes. 29a. thy fulness and thy trickling thou shalt not delay] A paraphrase is a necessity for English idiom: but it obliterates the characteristic curtness of the original. The two substantives are paraphrased by LXX., no doubt correctly, by ‘the firstfruits of thy threshing-floor and of thy wine-press.’ Both expressions are, however, peculiar, and no doubt archaic. ‘Fulness’ is used similarly in Numbers 18:27 (P) ‘like the fulness [in the parallel, v. 30, ‘increase,’ ‘produce’] from the wine-vat, and the corn from the threshing-floor’ (offered viz. by the Israelites as tithe): it seems to mean properly full yield (RVm. abundance)—here of the newly threshed corn, as in Nu. l.c. of the freshly expressed grape-juice. Naturally it does not signify here the whole yield of the year, but only that part of it which was offered to Jehovah as ‘firstfruits’ (cf. Exodus 23:16; Exodus 23:19). ‘Trickling’ (the masc. of the ordinary Heb. word for ‘tear’), whatever the true explanation of the expression may be1[190], pretty clearly denotes the freshly extracted juice of the grape (tirτsh, ‘must’),—perhaps also (but see footnote) of the olive (yiẓ ?hβr, ‘fresh oil’) as well. [190] Lane, Arab. Lex. p. 913, cites the expression ‘tear of the vine’ for wine; and A. R. S. Kennedy (EB. iv. 5314, s.v. Wine and Strong Drink) refers to the Spanish lagrima, ‘tear,’ the name for wine made from grape-juice which has exuded from the grapes without pressure. Such wine has always been considered superior to that made from juice extracted by treading the grapes; and as this method of obtaining grape-juice is mentioned in the Mishnah, and is still practised in Syria,—the grapes being laid out for some days on a mishtβḥ ?, or ‘spreading-place,’ from which the exuding juice trickled down into the wine-vat (see ibid.),—it is possible that the choice juice so obtained is what is here meant. If this explanation is correct, however, ‘oil’ will not have been included in the term; and the inclusion of this in the firstfruits (Deuteronomy 18:4, &c.) will not have taken place till later.The dedication to the deity of a portion of the new produce of the year is a widely prevalent custom. ‘Primitive peoples often partake of the new corn sacramentally, because they suppose it to be instinct with a divine spirit of life.

The sanctification of the nation was emphatically symbolized by strictness of diet as regards both the kind of animal, and the mode of slaughtering. See Lev. 11; 17.

31. Torn of beasts — Such meat was likely to be left unfit for eating by the violent death of the animal, and the failure to pour out its blood.