Sunday Sermonette: What not to eat

Leviticus has all of these elaborate (and highly repetitive) instructions delivered to Moses by God while the people are camped out in the desert subsisting on magic cookies that appear overnight. Just sayin'. In reality, of course, these rituals and rules must have developed over time and then were codified in this form. The puzzle is the rationale for all of this. None is offered in the text, it all seems arbitrary. We can see the priests making a substantial profit from the deal, which certainly can explain some of it, but much else is mysterious.

Regarding ch. 3, the Revised New Standard Version calls this instructions for a "sacrifice of well being." KJV translates this as a "peace offering," while the New International Version (which I present here) calls it a "fellowship offering." Since the Hebrew is evidently ambiguous, we can't be sure why people would make this particular sacrifice. This is the case with most of this material. The very similar ceremonies are called by various names, some of them mysterious and some of them specified for clear purposes; and they all contain seemingly arbitrary elements which nevertheless are said to be very meaningful to The Lord. Here is the text of Ch. 3, followed by some additional commentary of my own.

3 “‘If your offering is a fellowship offering, and you offer an animal from the herd, whether male or female, you are to present before the Lord an animal without defect. ² You are to lay your hand on the head of your offering and slaughter it at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Then Aaron’s sons the priests shall splash the blood against the sides of the altar. ³ From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the Lord: the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, ⁴ both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. ⁵ Then Aaron’s sons are to burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering that is lying on the burning wood; it is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.

⁶ “‘If you offer an animal from the flock as a fellowship offering to the Lord, you are to offer a male or female without defect. ⁷ If you offer a lamb, you are to present it before the Lord, ⁸ lay your hand on its head and slaughter it in front of the tent of meeting. Then Aaron’s sons shall splash its blood against the sides of the altar. ⁹ From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the Lord: its fat, the entire fat tail cut off close to the backbone, the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, ¹⁰ both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. ¹¹ The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering presented to the Lord.
¹² “‘If your offering is a goat, you are to present it before the Lord, ¹³ lay your hand on its head and slaughter it in front of the tent of meeting. Then Aaron’s sons shall splash its blood against the sides of the altar. ¹⁴ From what you offer you are to present this food offering to the Lord: the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, ¹⁵ both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. ¹⁶ The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering, a pleasing aroma. All the fat is the Lord’s.
¹⁷ “‘This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.’”

Evidently the rabbis decided that this prohibition does not include chicken fat. Anyway, the people obviously do eat some fat and some blood because it's in the meat, which evidently the priests get to keep for themselves although that isn't specified. Why God wants the fat an offal to be burned, why that particular odor is pleasing to him, we have no idea. Note that it is not prohibited to eat offal in general, it's just that it gets burned in this particular ceremony. So chopped liver is okay.

Peasant cuisine often includes blood -- typically in the form of blood sausage but also as a component of sauces and even a soup base. And of course fat is also incorporated in sausage and stews and sauces, or just crisped and eaten. For most of history people lived at a bare level of subsistence and couldn't afford to waste anything. So the prohibition on eating fat or blood was actually costly.  The command is presented without any elaboration, so I consider this quite a mystery. Maybe someone has an idea of why this law was promulgated.