What does the Bible say about eating animal blood?
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The Bible forbids consuming blood, treating it as sacred because God appointed it as the sign of life given for atonement. From Noah onward, Genesis 9:4 commands humanity not to eat flesh with its lifeblood, and the Mosaic law repeatedly reinforces this command in Leviticus 3:17, 17:10-14, and Deuteronomy 12:16, 23. Israel was therefore to drain blood from slaughtered animals rather than eat it. In Acts 15:20, 29, the apostles also instructed Gentile believers to abstain from blood, promoting holiness and fellowship within the early church. Christians should receive food thankfully and seek God’s glory in all they eat, as 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches, while honoring this biblical concern for the sanctity of life and Christ’s atoning blood.
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Rankings: OpenBible.info Topical Bible (CC BY) · Scripture: World English Bible
- Genesis 9:4
But flesh with the life of it, the blood of it, you shall not eat.
- Leviticus 17:14
For as to the life of all flesh, its blood is with its life: therefore I said to the children of Israel, "You shall not eat the blood of any kind of flesh; for the life of all flesh is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off."
- Acts 15:20
but that we write to them that they abstain from the pollution of idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood.
- Acts 15:29
that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality, from which if you keep yourselves, it will be well with you. Farewell."
- Leviticus 3:17
"'It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings, that you shall eat neither fat nor blood.'"
- Leviticus 17:10
"'Any man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who live as foreigners among them, who eats any kind of blood, I will set my face against that soul who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.
- Deuteronomy 12:16
Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it out on the earth as water.
- Genesis 1:29
God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food.
- Deuteronomy 12:23
Only be sure that you don't eat the blood: for the blood is the life; and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.
- 1 Corinthians 10:31
Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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