Genesis 9:4

But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof Man's privilege is attended, first, with a strict ritual prohibition. The words might be more literally rendered thus, "nevertheless flesh with its vital principle (or -soul"), which is its blood, ye shall not eat." The Israelites regarded the blood as in a mysterious way the vehicle of the soul, or vital principle (nephesh), of the flesh (Leviticus 17:11). The blood was always offered in sacrifice to God as the most sacred part of the victim, the symbol of its life. The prohibition to eat flesh, with the blood in it, formed one of the strictest rules of Israelite and Jewish life. As the institution of the Sabbath was associated with the age of the Creation, so the prohibition of blood-eating was associated with the age of Noah. In other words, its primitive character was shewn by its traditional origin, being regarded as antecedent even to the Call of Abraham. The infringement of the regulation betokens savage impiety (1 Samuel 14:32-34), or contamination with idolatrous abominations (Ezekiel 33:25). In Acts 15:29 to abstain from blood and from things strangled was absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding together the Jewish and Gentile members of the new Christian community 1 [13]. In our own time the Jews observe this regulation with strictness, and the Jewish butcher follows special rules in order that the meat may be entirely freed from blood ("Kosher Meat").

[13] But καὶ πνικτῶν is possibly here a gloss; and, if so, the gloss is a tribute to the usage. See Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epp. of St Paul.

The passages in the Law bearing upon this important regulation are Leviticus 17:10-14; Deuteronomy 12:16; Deuteronomy 12:23.