Of Its Mother

Sheep: an ewe with two lambs (source)Finally, we are presented with the phrase "its mother," which in Hebrew is imo (אמו).

Hebrew frequently uses familial terms in an idiomatic sense. Quite frequently, words like "brother," "father," "son," and "daughter" are used in a different way from their literal meaning. In Hebrew, "brother" can refer to a person's "kinsman," "countryman," or "friend." "Father" can be used to speak of a "source" or "originator." "Son" is a way to say that a person is characterized by something (such as a "son of peace"). "Daughters" can mean "women" or "inhabitants." Thus, there is a real possibility that the familial relationship spoken of here is also idiomatic. However, the main difficulty with a face-value translation of this term is practical, rather than linguistic.

Imagine you were the owner of a large flock of goats in ancient Israel. At a given time, you had several goats giving milk. After milking each of your goats, would you have kept each goat's milk in separate, labeled containers? Will you have a warehouse full of jugs labeled "Bessy," "Henrietta," "Stella," "Millie," and "Sugarplum"? How would you tell one goat's milk from the next? First of all, once the milk is removed from the goat, it is indistinguishable from any other milk. Second, all of your goats' milk would be pooled into one place.

If a man had only one goat, then he would not be able to cook any of its young in milk, since the milk would be from that one goat. If a man had two or more goats, the milk would be combined together into a single vessel, and still none of it could be used to cook with the young goats.

On the one hand, the Torah specifically mentions the milk "of its mother." On the other hand, it would never be possible to separate out milk that came from a particular animal. The original livestock owners who received this law would find themselves in a situation where they were unable to use any of their milk to cook with meat. But as a result, the phrase "of its mother" served no practical purpose to the people who first saw the Torah. To them, it might as well have just said, "in milk." This leaves us to ask if "of its mother" might have a meaning beyond its face value.

The sages dealt with this question, and their conclusion is that the phrase "its mother's milk" teaches us that the prohibition only applies to animals of a species that gives milk. Apparently, the sages felt that the term gedi was so broad in meaning that someone might not know to limit it to sheep, goats, cows, and the like, also applying it, for example, to birds. But since the phrase "its mother's milk" is included, we can see that only milk-bearing animals would apply. In other words, we must not cook the meat of a mammal in the milk of a mammal. While it might seem far-fetched to an English speaker, this interpretation fits well into a Hebraic context.

Bringing this perspective into our interpretive translation, we should then limit the type of meat involved only to that of mammals. A fair way to do so would be to call it "red meat." Thus, the passage could be translated, "You shall not cook red meat with dairy."