Leviticus 22:28 - Exposition

A lesson of charity is added. A young animal and its mother are not to be killed (though reference is specially made to sacrifice, the general word, not the sacrificial term, for slaying is used) on the same day, just as the kid is not to be seethed in its mother's milk ( Exodus 23:19 ; Deuteronomy 14:21 ), nor the mother bird be taken from the nest with the young ( Deuteronomy 22:6 ). Thus we see that the feelings of the human heart arc not to be rudely shocked by an act of apparent cruelty, even when no harm is thereby done to the object of that act. Mercy is to be taught by forbidding anything which may blunt the sentiment of mercy in the human heart.