Deuteronomy 6:3
6:3 Pay attention, Israel, and be careful to do this so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in number 1 – as the Lord, God of your ancestors, 2 said to you, you will have a land flowing with milk and honey.
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 3 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. 4
Deuteronomy 27:3
27:3 Then you must inscribe on them all the words of this law when you cross over, so that you may enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, 5 said to you.
Deuteronomy 31:20
31:20 For after I have brought them 6 to the land I promised to their 7 ancestors – one flowing with milk and honey – and they 8 eat their fill 9 and become fat, then they 10 will turn to other gods and worship them; they will reject me and break my covenant.
1 tn Heb “may multiply greatly” (so NASB, NRSV); the words “in number” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 10, 18, 23).
3 tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).
4 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.
5 tn Heb “fathers.”
6 tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
7 tn Heb “his.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “their.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
8 tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.
9 tn Heb “and are satisfied.”
10 tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.