Imamat 17:3-5

17:3 “Blood guilt ¹  will be accounted to any man ²  from the house of Israel ³  who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat inside the camp or outside the camp, ⁴  17:4 but has not brought it to the entrance of the Meeting Tent ⁵  to present it as ⁶  an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord. He has shed blood, so that man will be cut off from the midst of his people. ⁷  17:5 This is so that ⁸  the Israelites will bring their sacrifices that they are sacrificing in the open field ⁹  to the Lord at the entrance of the Meeting Tent to the priest and sacrifice them there as peace offering sacrifices to the Lord.

Imamat 26:30

26:30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, ¹⁰  and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. ¹¹  I will abhor you. ¹² 

Ulangan 12:14

12:14 for you may do so ¹³  only in the place the Lord chooses in one of your tribal areas – there you may do everything I am commanding you. ¹⁴ 

Ulangan 12:1

The Central Sanctuary

12:1 These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to obey as long as you live in the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, ¹⁵  has given you to possess. ¹⁶ 

1 Raja-raja 15:14

15:14 The high places were not eliminated, yet Asa was wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord throughout his lifetime. ¹⁷ 

[17:3]  ¹ tn The complex wording of vv. 3-4 requires stating “blood guilt” at the beginning of v. 3 even though it is not mentioned until the middle of v. 4. The Hebrew text has simply “blood,” but in this case it refers to the illegitimate shedding of animal blood, similar to the shedding of the blood of an innocent human being (Deut 19:10, etc.). In order for it to be legitimate the animal must be slaughtered at the tabernacle and its blood handled by the priests in the prescribed way (see, e.g., Lev 1:5; 3:2, 17; 4:5-7; 7:26-27, etc.; cf. vv. 10-16 below for more details).

[17:3]  ² tn Heb “Man man.” The reduplication is way of saying “any man” (cf. Lev 15:2; 22:18, etc.). See the note on Lev 15:2.

[17:3]  ³ tn The original LXX adds “or the sojourners who sojourn in your midst” (cf. Lev 16:29, etc., and note esp. 17:8, 10, and 13 below).

[17:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “or who slaughters from outside to the camp.”

[17:4]  ⁵ tn Smr and LXX add after “tent of meeting” the following: “to make it a burnt offering or a peace offering to the Lord for your acceptance as a soothing aroma, and slaughters it outside, and at the doorway of the tent of meeting has not brought it.”

[17:4]  ⁶ tc Smr includes the suffix “it,” which is needed in any case in the translation to conform to English style.

[17:4]  ⁷ sn The exact meaning of this penalty clause is not certain. It could mean (1) that he will be executed, whether by God or by man, (2) that he will be excommunicated from sanctuary worship and/or community benefits, or (3) that his line will be terminated by God (i.e., extirpation). See also the note on Lev 7:20.

[17:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “So that which.”

[17:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “on the faces of the field.”

[26:30]  ¹⁰ sn Regarding these cultic installations, see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 188, and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:903. The term rendered “incense altars” might better be rendered “sanctuaries [of foreign deities]” or “stelae.”

[26:30]  ¹¹ tn The translation reflects the Hebrew wordplay “your corpses…the corpses of your idols.” Since idols, being lifeless, do not really have “corpses,” the translation uses “dead bodies” for people and “lifeless bodies” for the idols.

[26:30]  ¹² tn Heb “and my soul will abhor you.”

[12:14]  ¹³ tn Heb “offer burnt offerings.” The expression “do so” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[12:14]  ¹⁴ sn This injunction to worship in a single and central sanctuary – one limited and appropriate to the thrice-annual festival celebrations (see Exod 23:14-17; 34:22-24; Lev 23:4-36; Deut 16:16-17) – marks a departure from previous times when worship was carried out at local shrines (cf. Gen 8:20; 12:7; 13:18; 22:9; 26:25; 35:1, 3, 7; Exod 17:15). Apart from the corporate worship of the whole theocratic community, however, worship at local altars would still be permitted as in the past (Deut 16:21; Judg 6:24-27; 13:19-20; 1 Sam 7:17; 10:5, 13; 2 Sam 24:18-25; 1 Kgs 18:30).

[12:1]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “fathers.”

[12:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “you must be careful to obey in the land the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days which you live in the land.” This adverbial statement modifies “to obey,” not “to possess,” so the order in the translation has been rearranged to make this clear.

[15:14]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “yet the heart of Asa was complete with the Lord all his days.”