Bible Strands
Exodus 23:19
Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh issues these commands to the Israelites within a covenant code, positioned immediately between instructions on sacrificial purity and the promise of an angelic guide.
The words — The text commands bringing בִּכּוּרֵי (bi.ku.Rei) = first-fruits of אַדְמָתְךָ ('ad.ma.te.kha) = your soil to the sanctuary, while using לֹא־ (lo'-) = not to prohibit cooking a young goat in its mother’s milk.
The thread — This exact phrasing reappears in Exodus 34:26, while related firstfruit and dietary regulations surface in Deuteronomy 14:21 and Deuteronomy 26:10.
Why it lands — The text demands delivering the initial harvest to the house of the LORD while forbidding a specific cooking practice, requiring strict adherence to concrete ritual boundaries without deviation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.
Cross-references
- Exodus 34:26 Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
- Deuteronomy 14:21 You are not to eat any carcass; you may give it to the foreigner residing within your gates, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
- Deuteronomy 26:10 And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land that You, O LORD, have given me.” Then you are to place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before Him.
- Nehemiah 10:35 We will also bring the firstfruits of our land and of every fruit tree to the house of the LORD year by year.
- Exodus 22:29 You must not hold back offerings from your granaries or vats. You are to give Me the firstborn of your sons.
- Numbers 18:12 I give you all the freshest olive oil and all the finest new wine and grain that the Israelites give to the LORD as their firstfruits.
- Deuteronomy 26:2 you are to take some of the firstfruits of all your produce from the soil of the land that the LORD your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for His Name,
- Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are only cruelty.
- Jeremiah 10:3 For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut down a tree from the forest; it is shaped with a chisel by the hands of a craftsman.
- 1 Corinthians 15:20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.