Broad meadows

Perhaps no verse is as enigmatic and puzzling as the command, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” It appears 3 times in scripture, with its first appearance in Exodus 23:19, with the entirety of the verse being, “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.“

One thing that I do when looking at a passage like this, is to either use simple definitions to gain understanding about how a symbol is being used in a context or to derive what can be known to be true from just the statement. After that we will examine the context that the verse sits in and begin the merging process as we have in other passages.

What we can know is true from “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.“ is that the “young goat” (introduced to us in Genesis 38) dies, or there would be no reason to cook it. An assumption that can be drawn from that is that his death has spiritual implications as it’s in scripture and confirms the beginning of this study in Genesis 15, where the goat first appears and is part of the covenant made with Abram.

The “mother’s milk” symbol is typically used to convey a mother’s care for her offspring. Given that the young goat is dead (to her) he would not be raised in his mother’s care. Why would this be significant? Because clearly Jesus’ mother was in his life from conception to death and resurrection. So this verse cannot be referring to Jesus.

So who would it be referring too? Immediately after this verse, it is written, “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.“ As we have done before, we would now merge the goat with this angel, as I have said from the beginning. The part that says, “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.“ then connects part of his mission with “first fruits.”

The second place this command appears is in Exodus 34:26. In verses 26-30 we get a little more insight into this character: “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty lights without eating bread or drinking water (bread and water being added to the list of symbols connected to this character) And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.”

Again we see his mission tied to first fruits and through merging we see that he is the one with the radiant face. In Genesis 38, where the young goat first appears, we were able to understand through the scarlet thread that it was Zerah who merged with the young goat. The name Zerah means brightness. This should also immediately takes us to the angel in Revelation 10 who had a face that shone like the sun (remember, we’re following the sun and the goat).

The last place this command appears is in Deuteronomy 14:21, “Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God.
Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” This command comes at the end of a long list of clean and unclean animals for the Israelites to eat or not eat. The clean animals are listed in Deuteronomy 14:4 & 5 all feed their young with their mother’s milk, but only the young goat appears in this command. This would signify that this is not simply a general command of compassion, but rather specific prophecy. By merging the character in its immediate context, this character is not an Israelite, but a foreigner. This could also attach his ministry to the “already dead”, perhaps.

In the next installment, because of numerous times the goat appears in Leviticus and Numbers, I’ll do a quick rundown of those instances, but then jump ahead to the book of Judges as we begin to zero in on this important scriptural person, perhaps some things about his life and more on what his mission or missions might be.