Why does God forbid His people from “boiling a kid in it’s mothers milk? ( As told in Exodus 23:19)
by 
CousinVinny
ANSWERS: 6
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In modern day, a lot of old testament laws seem strange to ancient society, but we are told not to question God. Remember, laws in the first 5 books of the bible were directed as letters to Israel. The new testament, mainly Acts - 2 Timothy provides modern laws in letters to the church.
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This kind of boiling may have originated with the pagans and their ritual of trying to produce rain. God provides the milk of the mother goat to nourish the kid and to help it grow. Cooking the kid in its mother’s milk would show contempt for this relationship of the parent and it’s young. This law also highlights God’s tender compassion.
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The Ugaritic texts at Ras Shamra refer to this as a pagan Canaanitic religious practice, so it was in some way intended to bring about fertiilty either of the fields, the flocks, or the wives. It was all a fertility cult--a kind of voodoo intended to guarantee that everything reproduced and grew, often simply by pleasing the weather-gods to send rain.
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I was going to give a sarcastic answer that it's not very nice to boil children before I realised you meant young goats!
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God desires us to have a intimate relationship with Him. Any thing that messes with that intimacy is to be avoided. We are to come to the Kingdom of God as little children. May we not be cooked by disciples who try to keep us from being nourished by Jesus before we are weaned. In context, are we to put on children all the requirements of giving and sabbath rest before they are mature?
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There are three classical reasons: 1. To teach us that, while we may eat meat, we are to avoid cruelty to animals (cooking a kid in its mother's milk shows insensitivity). 2. It was a pagan practice at that time, so Jews were intsructed to avoid it. 3. Milk represents life, while meat comes from a dead animal. Judaism considers it spiritually unhealthy to mix these two realms.
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