your souls,” is not a double one, viz., (1) because the blood contained the soul of the animal, and (2) because God had set apart the blood, as the medium of expiation for the human soul, for the altar, i.e., to be sprinkled upon the altar. The first reason simply forms the foundation for the second: God appointed the blood for the altar, as containing the soul of the animal, to be the medium of expiation for the souls of men, and therefore prohibited its being used as food. “For the blood it expiates by virtue of the soul,” not “the soul” itself. בּ with כּפּר has only a local or instrumental signification (Lev 6:23; Lev 16:17, Lev 16:27; also Lev 7:7; Exo 29:33; Num 5:8). Accordingly, it was not the blood as such, but the blood as the vehicle of the soul, which possessed expiatory virtue; because the animal soul was offered to God upon the altar as a substitute for the human soul. Hence every bleeding sacrifice had an expiatory force, though without being an expiatory sacrifice in the strict sense of the word.
Verse 13
The blood also of such hunted game as was edible, whether bird or beast, was not to be eaten either by the Israelite or stranger, but to be poured out and covered with earth. In Deu 12:16 and Deu 12:24, where the command to slay all the domestic animals at the tabernacle as slain-offerings is repealed, this is extended to such domestic animals as were slaughtered for food; their blood also was not to be eaten, but to be poured upon the earth “like water,” i.e., not quasi rem profanam et nullo ritu sacro (Rosenmüller, etc.), but like water which is poured upon the earth, sucked in by it, and thus given back to the womb of the earth, from which God had caused the animals to come forth at their creation (Gen 1:24). Hence pouring it out upon the earth like water was substantially the same as pouring it out and covering it with earth (cf. Eze 24:7-8); and the purpose of the command was to prevent the desecration of the vehicle of the soulish life, which was sanctified as the medium of expiation.
verses 14-16
“For as for the soul of all flesh...its blood makes out its soul:” i.e., “this is the case with the soul of all flesh, that it is its blood which makes out its soul.” בּנפשׁו is to be taken as a predicate in its meaning, introduced with beth essentiale. It is only as so understood, that the clause supplies a reason at all in harmony with the context. Because the distinguishing characteristic of the blood as, that it was the soul of the being when living in the flesh; therefore it was
