“‘It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings, that you shall eat neither fat nor blood.’”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 17. Fat. It is meant of the fat, which by the prescription of the law was to be offered on God’s altar: not of the fat of meat, such as we commonly eat. Challoner.—This distinction is sufficiently insinuated; (Calmet. 7:25,) whence it also appears that the fat, here forbidden, is only that, which, in all sacrifices, appertains to the Lord, verse 9, 10. The fat which was intermingled with the flesh might be eaten, and even the rest if the animal was not sacrificed. God repeatedly forbade the use of blood. Calmet. 17:13. Yet the Jews abstain from the fat also of all oxen, sheep, and goats; (Josep. iii. 10,) and some, adhering to the words of this text, forbid the use of fat indiscriminately. Calmet.—A Lapide condemns it, if the animal might be offered in sacrifice, though it were slain at home.