To Encourage You

Exodus 23:19 “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

Have you ever come across a verse in the Bible that makes absolutely no sense to you, and perhaps that even seems bizarre?  I have. One such verse is the one above from Exodus 23.  I’ve read it from time to time over the years and it has always made me scratch my head.  Yet, as with many other passages, I’ve come to understand that the problem isn’t so much with what has been written as it is with me.  Yesterday I was reading an essay by F.W. Boreham entitled “A Forbidden Dish.” What a gifted writer this late British pastor was!  What insights about so many things – including this particular essay which addressed the verse above. As Boreham points out, this same command occurs not just here but two other times in the Bible: Exodus 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21.  It’s as if God is reminding us that this strange verse isn’t a mistake.  Like every other jot and tittle in the Bible, He meant for this to be there. As such, it has a purpose for us, for hasn’t He told us clearly, “ALL Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)?  Even this verse about boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk? Yes, even this one!  

One thing that Boreham mentions about this verse is that it may have been among the idolatrous customs of the pagans that lived in the Promised Land that was to be occupied by the nation of Israel.  Perhaps that’s why the Israelites weren’t to do it. Perhaps it was a regulation meant to help keep them separated from such people and customs, much like the regulations about clean and unclean foods. But it doesn’t specifically tell us that this was the case. So, what else could be the reason for such a rule?  

As Boreham meditated on this verse, largely in response to its use as a quotation by another writer, Sir Walter Scott, he came to understand that there’s a principle being stated in this rule perhaps in a better way than it is anywhere else in all the Scriptures.  In Boreham’s words, “The mother’s milk is Nature’s beautiful provision for the life and sustenance of the kid.  Thou shalt not pervert that which was intended to be a ministry of life into an instrument of destruction.”  He then gives several examples where such things might occur.  He notes how romantic love itself, the most nurturing and life giving of all affections, has been turned by many into a weapon of destruction as both men and women, using a charade of love, have lured the objects of their “affection” into crimes of passion of many sorts.  Thinking more along these lines, in today’s world, the womb, that most protective and nourishing of all environments for a little infant, has been turned into a place of violence millions of times over all around the world.  One more example:  How many preachers around the world have taken the Word of God, the very bread of life, and turned it into nothing more than a means for financial gain (1 Timothy 6:5)?  Like the Pharisees, they take what was meant as a life-giving message and used it to, in effect, “devour widows’ houses” (Luke 20:47). What an abomination this is!  

It is in this example of the boiling of a kid in its mother’s milk that we see a principle that is the very opposite of the ways of God.  Think of how our Father in heaven turned an implement of death into a means of life for the entire world!  The cross, the most excruciating Roman invention of torture and death, was endured by our Lord to bring salvation and eternal life to all who would believe.  Such wonderful thoughts borne from a wonderful principle drawn from a strange custom that the omniscient God has provided in His Word for our ultimate blessing. Is it any wonder that the apostle Paul exclaimed, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33).

Praise the Lord!