Deuteronomy 2:6

2:6 You may purchase ¹  food to eat and water to drink from them.

Deuteronomy 6:19

6:19 and that you may drive out all your enemies just as the Lord said.

Deuteronomy 14:4

14:4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,

Deuteronomy 14:12

14:12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, ²  the vulture, ³  the black vulture, ⁴ 

Deuteronomy 14:19

14:19 and any winged thing on the ground are impure to you – they may not be eaten. ⁵ 

Deuteronomy 14:21

14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages ⁶  and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 21:12

21:12 you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, ⁸  trim her nails,

Deuteronomy 23:1

Purity in Public Worship

23:1 A man with crushed ⁹  or severed genitals ¹⁰  may not enter the assembly of the Lord. ¹¹ 

Deuteronomy 23:8

23:8 Children of the third generation born to them ¹²  may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 24:2

24:2 When she has left him ¹³  she may go and become someone else’s wife.

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¹ tn Heb includes “with silver.”

² tn NEB “the griffon-vulture.”

³ tn The Hebrew term פֶּרֶס (peres) describes a large vulture otherwise known as the ossifrage (cf. KJV). This largest of the vultures takes its name from its habit of dropping skeletal remains from a great height so as to break the bones apart.

⁴ tn The Hebrew term עָזְנִיָּה (’ozniyyah) may describe the black vulture (so NIV) or it may refer to the osprey (so NAB, NRSV, NLT), an eagle-like bird subsisting mainly on fish.

⁵ tc The MT reads the Niphal (passive) for expected Qal (“you [plural] must not eat”); cf. Smr, LXX. However, the harder reading should stand.

⁶ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

⁷ sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the Lord and fittingly concludes the topic of various breaches of purity and holiness as represented by the ingestion of unclean animals (vv. 3-21). See C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid In Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35.

⁸ sn This requirement for the woman to shave her head may symbolize the putting away of the old life and customs in preparation for being numbered among the people of the Lord. The same is true for the two following requirements.

⁹ tn Heb “bruised by crushing,” which many English versions take to refer to crushed testicles (NAB, NRSV, NLT); TEV “who has been castrated.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “cut off with respect to the penis”; KJV, ASV “hath his privy member cut off”; English versions vary in their degree of euphemism here; cf. NAB, NRSV, TEV, NLT “penis”; NASB “male organ”; NCV “sex organ”; CEV “private parts”; NIV “emasculated by crushing or cutting.”

¹¹ sn The Hebrew term translated “assembly” (קָהָל, qahal) does not refer here to the nation as such but to the formal services of the tabernacle or temple. Since emasculated or other sexually abnormal persons were commonly associated with pagan temple personnel, the thrust here may be primarily polemical in intent. One should not read into this anything having to do with the mentally and physically handicapped as fit to participate in the life and ministry of the church.

¹² sn Concessions were made to the Edomites and Egyptians (as compared to the others listed in vv. 1-6) because the Edomites (i.e., Esauites) were full “brothers” of Israel and the Egyptians had provided security and sustenance for Israel for more than four centuries.

¹³ tn Heb “his house.”