The Israelites were told: “You must not eat any body already dead. To the alien resident who is inside your gates you may give it, and he must eat it; or there may be a selling of it to a foreigner, because you are a holy people to Jehovah your God.” (Deuteronomy 14:21) Though it was unbled, they could sell the carcass to an alien resident. In seeming conflict, Leviticus 17:10 says: “As for any man of the house of Israel or some alien resident who is residing as an alien in their midst who eats any sort of blood, I shall certainly set my face against the soul that is eating the blood, and I shall indeed cut him off from among his people.” Why the difference between these verses?

In presenting their view, some have asserted that Deuteronomy 14:21 permitted the alien to eat unbled meat if it was from an animal that was not killed by man, for then man did not have to give its blood (representing life) back to God. Leviticus 17:15 might seem to support this view; it says that the native or alien who ate a “body already dead or something torn by a wild beast” was simply to “wash . . . and be unclean until the evening.” So it could appear that no substantial guilt came from eating blood if the victim was not killed by man. Thus some claim that it would not be wrong to take blood from a living creature, using it for food or for transfusions.

However, is the basic difference between Deuteronomy 14:21 and Leviticus 17:10, 15 a matter of how the animal died? The Scriptural answer must be, No.

The Israelites knew that they absolutely could not eat unbled meat from an animal that died of itself or was killed by a wild beast. While still at Mount Sinai they had been told to dispose of such carcasses. (Exodus 22:31) Deuteronomy 14:21 is in harmony, directing Israelites in the Promised Land to get rid of such unbled carcasses but allowing them to sell such to aliens.

Now let us carefully examine Leviticus 17:10. It says that no “man of the house of Israel or some alien resident” should eat blood. Was that because the animal had been killed by a human and so the blood had to be returned to God? To claim such is to read into the verse more than it says. Further, if guilt resulted only if blood was from a creature killed by man, then Deuteronomy 14:21 and Exodus 22:31 would not have forbidden Israelites to eat unbled flesh from animals that were not killed by men. Yet the Israelites clearly knew they could not eat such meat. Ezekiel stated: “My soul is not a defiled one; neither a body already dead nor a torn animal have I eaten from my youth up.”​—Ezekiel 4:14; compare 44:31.

Why, then, does Deuteronomy 14:21 say that the “alien resident” could be sold unbled meat, but Leviticus 17:10 forbids the “alien resident” to eat blood? Both God’s people and Bible commentators have recognized that the distinction must have been the religious standing of the alien involved. Aid to Bible Understanding (page 51) points out that sometimes the term “alien resident” meant a person among the Israelites who was not a full proselyte. It appears that this sort of person is meant at Deuteronomy 14:21, a man who was not trying to keep all of God’s laws and who might have his own uses for a carcass considered unclean by Israelites and proselytes. Jewish scholars, too, have offered this explanation.a

That council also directed God’s servants to ‘abstain from blood.’ If those anointed Christians could not consume blood in meat from a strangled creature, they certainly could not take in blood from a living creature. It is not hard to see that neither the ancient Israelites nor obedient Christians would imitate the African tribesmen who shoot arrows into the jugular vein of live cattle to obtain blood that they mix with milk and drink. Similarly, God’s servants could not accept the medical practice whereby units of human blood are withdrawn and given as transfusions intended to extend life. Such practices violate God’s condemnation of anyone “who eats any sort of blood” and the command that Christians ‘abstain from blood.’​—Acts 15:28, 29; Leviticus 17:10.