Discovery BoxDeuteronomy 14:21 
Context14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages 1 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. 2
Deuteronomy 20:19
Context20:19 If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, 3 you must not chop down its trees, 4 for you may eat fruit 5 from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it! 6
1 tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).
2 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
3 tn Heb “to fight against it to capture it.”
4 tn Heb “you must not destroy its trees by chopping them with an iron” (i.e., an ax).
5 tn Heb “you may eat from them.” The direct object is not expressed; the word “fruit” is supplied in the translation for clarity.
6 tn Heb “to go before you in siege.”
