A Young Goat

Goats: a mountain goat with its young (source)The next term to consider is the word translated "a young goat." The Hebrew word is gedi (גדי).

The English phrase "a young goat" is quite specific. If we assume our translation has razor sharp precision, then it should be perfectly acceptable to cook a young lamb in its mother's milk.

The term gedi is used a total of sixteen times in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the three verses that contain the commandment not to cook a gedi in it's mother's milk. Ten of the remaining thirteen instances (including all of the other instances in the five books of the Torah) occur in a two-word construct: "a gedi of goats" (gedi izzim, גדי עזים).

If gedi only means "young goat," then what would be the point of modifying the word gedi with the specific term "of goats"? The fact that the phrase "a gedi of goats" is so common indicates that gedi alone would not necessarily refer to a goat in specific.

When we look at the other three passages in which gedi stands alone,1 we find that in these cases the exact species of animal is not of great consequence.

If the exact animal species was important in the case of cooking in its mother's milk, we would have expected the Torah to use the specific form. The fact that in this commandment the Torah deviates from the conventional construct in order to leave gedi unmodified shows that the species of the animal is not the main concern. It seems that this word was chosen to refer to the young of any livestock.

The Greek of the LXX supports a loose interpretation as well. In each of the three instances of this commandment in the Torah, the LXX renders the Hebrew word gedi as the Greek aren (αρήν), which does not mean "kid" but "lamb."2

But if "goat" is not the point of the verse, why did the Torah choose the term gedi, a word that is frequently paired with goats?

To understand this, let's consider one of the ways in which the culture of the Ancient Near East was different from our own. In our world, cows are the main producers of milk for drinking. It is rare that milk would come from any other source. When someone just says "milk," they nearly always mean cow milk. If you were to ask a child, "Where does milk come from?" the answer would likely be "cows," even though a more complete answer is "mammals."

Suppose your friend said, "I never drink milk if the cows were treated with antibiotics." What if your friend was offered milk from a goat that was treated with antibiotics instead? Your friend would probably not want it either. Your friend only mentioned cows because they are the most common source of milk.

In the Ancient Near East, milk from cows was rarely used for drinking. Vamosh writes, "Goats, therefore, and to a lesser extent sheep, were a much more common source of milk than cows."3 When someone thought of milk, they thought of goats, not cows.

For someone who lives in a culture that strongly associates milk with goats, it would be perfectly natural to use the term gedi in place of any milk-producing animal. This is especially true because gedi can refer to other animals as well as goats. Because of this, the term that might be understood in a specific sense nonetheless stands in for the general category.4

But what about the "young" aspect of gedi? Would it really be permissible to cook a mature goat in its mother's milk? After all, it would not be uncommon to find a goat that still produced milk and had mature offspring.

But again, animals were typically slaughtered for meat while they were still young. It makes sense to refer to butchered animals in general as "younglings," just as it is natural to refer to motor vehicles in general as "cars."

All animals were young at some point. The use of a term that implies youth could possibly serve more of a purpose relating to the symbolic significance of the prohibition, rather than to denote an age limit.

Can we take a commandment that sounds so specific and expand it to something general? As it was shown, the original Hebrew words already support a broader interpretation. In addition, this could be considered one of several laws in which a specific instance is used to illustrate a general principle.

For example, the Torah speaks of an ox that gores a person:

When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. (Exodus 21:28)

But what if a person was gored by a ram or goat? Suppose it was a dog that bit him. Since the Torah is silent regarding these species, is there no recourse for the victim?

Rather, here is a prime example of a type of law in the Torah where a specific example is cited to illustrate a general principle. The point of this law is not the type of animal involved, but an ox was chosen as an example because it represents a typical case.

Finally, the phrase "boil a young goat in its mother's milk" might evoke the mental image of a whole animal lying in the pot. But had a dish such as this been served, the goat would have been fully slaughtered and processed, leaving not "a goat" in the pot but small cuts of goat meat.

Thus, we can see how the term gedi, in the context of this verse, could reasonably be understood as "meat." So far, we can see that it is reasonable to interpret the verse as "you shall not cook meat in its mother's milk."

1. 1. Judges 14:6; 1 Samuel 10:3; Isaiah 11:6.
2. 2. In most other places the LXX uses the word erifos, which does mean "kid."
3. 3. Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, Food at the Time of the Bible, p. 67.
4. 4. Here is another example of a specific noun standing in for its general category. Suppose a sign posted in a store reads, "No shirt, no shoes, no service." If a man walks in wearing boots rather than shoes, he will not be asked to leave. Even though boots are not technically shoes, the point of the policy does have anything to do with the specific type of footwear. (Archaeologists thousands of years in the future that uncover this sign may have a hard time decoding its terse language.)