Leviticus 7 and the Three-Day Rule on the Meat

I think the most interesting thing in Leviticus 7 is the three-day rule on the peace offering, and I think the ban on fat and blood, which is what the chapter is known for, gets more attention than it earns. The ban takes five verses and the text is blunt about it. The three-day rule has a puzzle sitting inside it.

The chapter runs thirty-eight verses and the order is odd. Trespass offering first, then a few portions for the priests, then the peace offering, then the fat and blood in the middle of things, and then the peace offering a second time for the breast and shoulder. It reads like a supplement to chapters 1 through 6, which is more or less what it is.

What does the trespass offering add in Leviticus 7?

Almost nothing, and verse 7 says so on purpose: "As the sin offering is, so is the trespass offering: there is one law for them: the priest that maketh atonement therewith shall have it."

The details in verses 2 through 5 are ones you've already met. The animal is killed where the burnt offering is killed, the blood is sprinkled round about the altar, and then comes the list of fat, which is the rump, the fat covering the inwards, the two kidneys with the fat on them by the flanks and the caul above the liver. The priest burns that on the altar. Verse 6 gives the rest to "every male among the priests," to be eaten "in the holy place," and calls it most holy, which is how verse 1 opened.

So the chapter circles back to the sin offering I wrote about in the Leviticus 4 post and says the two are governed by one rule. The chapter doesn't try to separate them. It tells you the handling is the same and that the priest who does the work keeps the meat.

Why were the fat and blood off limits?

Start with what the text actually restricts, because it's narrower than I remembered and also wider.

Verse 23 names the animals for the fat: ox, sheep, goat. No fowl. Verse 24 says the fat of a beast that died of itself or was torn by animals "may be used in any other use" but you were to "in no wise eat of it." Then verse 25 hangs the penalty on one case only, the fat of an animal "of which men offer an offering made by fire." Eat that fat and "the soul that eateth it shall be cut off from his people."

Blood works differently, and verse 26 says "no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings," and verse 27 attaches the same penalty to any blood at all. So the fat rule has a boundary around the altar animals and the blood rule doesn't. The two hens in my backyard, Penny and Waffle, are covered by verse 26 and not by verse 23, which is a sentence I did not expect to write this week.

Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings.

Leviticus 7:26

The reason given elsewhere in the same chapter group is plain enough. Leviticus 3:16 says "all the fat is the Lord's," and verse 17 of that chapter makes it "a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood." I wrote about the part of the peace offering nobody ate in the Leviticus 3 post, and this chapter is the same idea with the penalty attached.

Blood was forbidden before Sinai. In Genesis 9:4 it's already forbidden to Noah's family: "flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." And in Acts 15:20 and 29 the apostles, deciding what to ask of Gentile converts, include abstaining "from blood" in a very short list. I wouldn't build much on that. It does show the prohibition didn't begin with the law of Moses and didn't vanish the moment the law was fulfilled in the early church. Why the apostles picked those items, the passage doesn't say.

As I understand our teaching, Latter-day Saints don't keep the Levitical food laws. The Word of Wisdom is its own thing and says nothing about fat and blood. So this section isn't a rule I live under, and I read it with interest and without any urge to apply it to my dinner.

Why does the peace offering have a three-day limit?

Here's where I got stuck.

A Sunday last month, Melissa did a roast, the kind she starts at eight in the morning, so the whole house smells of it when we walk back from church. We ate it Sunday, we ate it as sandwiches Monday, and on Tuesday I came in from the garage around twenty to nine and found a plastic container of what was left. I stood at the open fridge and ate it cold with a fork. Melissa came through the doorway, looked at the container and said, "That's Sunday's." She wasn't alarmed. She said it the way you'd tell someone their shoe was untied. Her rule, which I'd heard before and never filed anywhere, is that a Sunday roast is good for Sunday and Monday and after that it's Tuesday's problem.

I finished it. Nothing happened. I mention it because this week I got to verse 16 and felt briefly caught.

And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall not leave any of it until the morning.

Leviticus 7:15

Verse 15 is the thanksgiving offering, and it gets one day. Verse 16 gives a vow or a voluntary offering the day it's offered and "on the morrow also." Verse 17 says what's left on the third day "shall be burnt with fire," and verse 18 says if any of it is eaten on the third day "it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it: it shall be an abomination, and the soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity."

Melissa's rule is verse 16 almost exactly. She'd say that's a coincidence.

The easy reading is food safety, since meat in a tent in the wilderness goes off and you can't keep it. That's probably part of it. But check the numbers. Verse 15 and verse 16 are both peace offerings, and one gets a day while the other gets two. If the clock were only about spoilage, the thanksgiving meat would keep as long as the vow meat. It doesn't, so the clock is also about something else.

My guess, and it is a guess, is that the thanksgiving offering is the one with the most stuff attached. Verses 12 and 13 have unleavened cakes mingled with oil, unleavened wafers anointed with oil, cakes of fine flour fried and then leavened bread on top of that. That's a lot of bread and a whole animal and one day to finish it. You'd need people, and maybe that's the point. The chapter doesn't say so.

The word that stops me is "imputed." Verse 18 says the offering won't be imputed to the man who brought it, which as far as I can tell voids the whole offering and not just the third-day meal. That's a heavy consequence for leftovers.

Who got the breast and the shoulder?

The last section is the shortest, so I'll keep it short. Verses 29 through 34 say the person bringing a peace offering has to bring it himself. "His own hands shall bring the offerings of the Lord made by fire, the fat with the breast." The fat goes up on the altar. The breast is waved and goes to Aaron and his sons. The right shoulder goes to the priest who offered the blood and the fat. Verse 34 calls this a statute for ever.

So the offerer carries the fat to the altar himself, and the priests get the breast and the shoulder. Verses 35 and 36 close the section by saying this portion was fixed on the day Aaron and his sons were anointed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a trespass offering and a sin offering?

Leviticus 7 doesn't draw the line. Verse 7 says "there is one law for them," and that's about handling, not purpose. Chapters 5 and 6 are where the trespass cases show up, and some of them involve paying back what was lost before you bring the ram. I'd read those chapters if you want the difference.

Do Latter-day Saints have to follow the fat and blood laws?

No. As I understand it, these belong to the law of Moses and aren't part of our dietary practice. The Word of Wisdom is separate and doesn't mention either one. I'll have a steak tonight without checking verse 25 first.

What does "cut off from his people" mean in verses 20, 21, 25 and 27?

The text doesn't say. It shows up in this chapter for eating peace offering meat while unclean, for touching something unclean and then eating it, for eating altar fat and for eating blood. People read it as execution or as expulsion or as something the Lord does himself. What I can say is that it's the same phrase each time.

Why three days and not two, or four?

Verse 17 gives the day and verse 18 gives the consequence and neither gives a reason, so any answer is a guess. Spoilage is the obvious one, but the one-day clock on the thanksgiving meat makes me think it isn't the only one. If you've got a better answer, send it along.

Today I'm going to clean out the back shelf of the fridge, before anyone has to tell me whose container it is. Leviticus 8 is next, and I'll be in it with the consecration of Aaron and his sons, which is the ordination that verses 35 and 36 here point toward.

— D.