Why Exodus 23:19b May Be the “Linchpin” of All Scripture

Last updated on: August 15, 2026 at 9:48 am by Clark Elder Morrow

Why Exodus 23:19b May Be the “Linchpin” of All Scripture 2026-08-15T09:48:01-07:00 Clark Elder Morrow

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.” The mother’s milk is a physical expression of her love, meant to nourish, never to harm. | Image created for Patheos.

Ten Words of Compassion

“You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.”

Nowhere else in literature will you find so much heartfelt compassion, so much lovingkindness, so much heartbreaking pathos, or so much moral sensitivity, packed into ten simple words. In a world where other societies were literally burning their children in sacrificial flames, Moses was told, in effect, that it would be unendurably anguish-making to see a young goat boiled in the milk its mother had given it for food. That is the measure of God’s compassion. (From this we can extrapolate how much God suffers when human beings are tortured or murdered.)

Even before God gives the famous description of Himself in Ex 34:6 (“The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth”) we find this poignant glimpse of His pitying Spirit. The Hebrew word for “compassionate” (rahum) appears in 34:6, where the KJV renders it “merciful.” Psalm 103:8 and 145:8 use the same language, as does Jonah 4:2.

The God of the Womb

It is crucial at this point to note that rahum is derived, or linked, or related to, the Hebrew term rechem, which signifies “the womb.” The idea behind God’s use of the word rahum in sketching Himself is that He is abounding in womb-love for His people. The love a mother has for her child – lifelong, inextinguishable, deeply-rooted, inexplicable – is the love Yahweh has for all humanity (“God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”).

A World Without Mercy

The Code of Hammurabi does not concern itself with mercy or compassion – it operates strictly on a lex talionis basis, and punishments are harsh. We know from Exodus itself how cruel and arbitrary justice was under the pharaohs of Moses’ time: the ruler’s word was incontrovertible law, no matter how much it reeked of personal pique, pride, or reprisal. The Assyrian Empire is famous for its bloody and murderous approach to both governance and warfare. The Canaanites’ atrocities stank so nauseatingly in the nostrils of God that He told the Jews: “Wipe them all out, and leave not a soul behind.”

The ancient Hebrews were surrounded by brutal savagery of the most violent and loathsome variety, regardless of Egyptian architecture or Mesopotamian literacy. The vengeance of the potentate set the tone, softened albeit to a small degree by the universal law of hospitality. Nevertheless, kings were not enjoying panegyrics on the womb-love they extended to their subjects.

That is the context for the all-important verse in question. “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Yet how can this be the linchpin of the entire Bible?

The Spring of the Whole River

May I suggest that everything that flows from Holy Scripture – the entire massive river of Mercy and Love and Forgiveness – finds its tiny initial bubbling spring in this brief verse? From this infinitely tender injunction spreads forth all that the Divine has to say about the womb-love that provides eternal life. For consider what the simple words are saying: a mother’s milk is to provide food and nourishment for her child; to boil the child in that milk would be the very opposite of all that God and God’s Nature and God’s Natural Order intended from the very beginning. It would be a diabolical reversal of Life and its most basic patterns and procedures. The milk is a physical expression of the mother’s love, one she would look around for if it were missing – an outpouring of the need to feed that in the deepest layers of her soul she would always assume to be part of her makeup, and would naturally look to God to provide as a “taken-for-granted” function of her being. So fundamental and foundational is this instinct that motherhood is inconceivable without it. So perverse and demonic is the upending of this instinct, that good is inconceivable if that upending is sanctioned.

The Pelican and the Hen

The entirety of Scripture is essentially a story about how God had so much womb-love for humanity that He Himself took the punishment we had earned, in order that His children could be saved and nourished and live with Him forever. He was the Pelican of fable that stabbed its own breast to provide nourishing blood for its young. Jesus likened himself to a mother hen longing to shield her children with her wings. The whole story is about Life pouring out saving sustenance for an erring brood, thereby enhancing its Life.

Death in the Pot

The giving of Life for Life – the augmenting and fulfilling of Life by means of the ultimate Life: Exodus 23:19b is the first glimpse we get of that stunning and stupendous narrative (in a warning against its inversion), and thereby hangs the Tale. Everything in the Book finds its original theme in the minuscule directive not to turn the gift of milk/blood into a poisonous hellish death-dealing stew. “There is death in the pot!” cried the prophets in 2 Kings 4 – and their words had a wider-ranging significance than even they as prophets knew. The curse that fell on the world in Genesis finds thousands of ways to sneak death into the most inauspicious vessels, and oftentimes that subversion is more symbolic than material.

But man does not live by bread alone; he lives very much through and by symbols, and that is why Father warns us strongly, vigorously, “manfully,” against standing The Most Important Symbol on its head. Many suggested the Canaanites boiled kids in mother’s milk as a magical stimulus to fertility. They got it exactly and precisely backward and wrong. The whole point – the linchpin – of Scripture is that paternal love is sacrificial, and that God’s womb-love is poured out to save us from starving. It would be a sad token of depravity to engage in an act that mocked that love, especially in so heartless and so uncaring and so unnatural an act as cooking a child in its mother’s milk.

Evangelical

Family, Parenting and Religion

Education and Religion

Previous Post

October 1, 2025

Are the Dead in Christ Alive or Dead?

Next Post

September 10, 2026 Why Is There An Altar In Heaven?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Basic Theology Christian Poetry Christian Social History Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 October 2025 July 2025 May 2025 March 2025 February 2025 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz