o eat flesh which has
not first been drained of blood.

25. The Hebrew text presents many difficulties, and, for this reason,
interpreters are at variance. It is needless to recite all renderings
of this verse. I steadily follow the rule that the words must explain
the things, not the things the words. Hence, I spend no time upon the
ideas of those who explain the words according to their own
inclinations, making them serve the preconceived notions which they
bring to their literature.

26. Let us first look at the meaning of the words. _Rephesh_ properly
denotes a body with a soul, or a living animal, such as the ox, the
sheep, man, etc. It denotes not merely the body, but a living body, as
when Christ says: I lay down my life for the sheep, Jn 10, 15. Here
the word "life" means nothing else than the life animating the body.
_Basar_, however, means flesh, which is a part of the material
element, and yet has its breath and its energy, not from the body, but
from the soul. For the flesh or the body, of itself and without the
soul, is an inanimate thing, like a log or a stone; but when it is
filled with the breath of the soul, then its fluids and all bodily
forces assume activity.

27. God here forbids the eating of a body which still contains the
stirring, moving, living soul, as the hawk devours chickens, and the
wolf sheep, without killing them, but while still alive. Such cruelty
is here forbidden by Jehovah, who sets bounds to the privilege of
slaughtering, lest it be done in so beastly a manner that living
bodies or portions thereof be devoured. The lawful manner of
slaughtering is to be observed, such as was followed at the altar and
in religious rites, where the beast, having been slain without cruelty
and duly cleansed from blood, was finally offered to God. I hold that
the simple and true meaning of the text, which is also given by some
Jewish teachers, is that we must not eat raw flesh and members still
palpitating, as did the Laestrygones and the Cyclopes.

V. 5. _And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require;
at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man,
even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of
man._

28. Here the Hebrew text is even more difficult than in the foregoing
verse. Lyra, quoting the Rabbins, finds four kinds of manslaughter
indicated here; he divides the statement into two parts, and finds a
twofold explanation for each. He