Leviticus 17:14
Leviticus 17:1414For the life of all flesh is its blood. Therefore I have told the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any living thing, because the life of all flesh is its blood; whoever eats it must be cut off.’
Together with verse 11, this verse anchors the Watchtower's blood prohibition. The instruction "you must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh" is read as a categorical, transhistorical command applying to all forms of blood consumption — including intravenous transfusion. The penalty under the Mosaic law ("anyone eating it will be cut off") is taken to imply that violating the prohibition today carries comparable spiritual consequences. The verse is taught early to Witness children and reinforced through HLC (Hospital Liaison Committee) materials.
Read what is forbidden: eating. The Hebrew akal — to consume by mouth, as food — covers diet, not medicine. frames this as a prohibition on eating "meat with its lifeblood still in it" — that is, raw, unbled meat. A transfusion is not eating; it is a medical procedure that did not exist until the twentieth century. The Acts 15 council reaffirmed abstaining from blood alongside abstaining from food offered to idols and from fornication; Paul later treats food offered to idols as a matter of conscience (1 Corinthians 8 and 10). If the Acts 15 list is a hard transhistorical rule on all four items, the Watchtower itself does not consistently apply it. If it is pastoral guidance about table fellowship, then weaponising it against emergency medicine — to the point of letting children die — is the opposite of the mercy Jesus modelled when he applied Hosea's "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" () to the ceremonial law.
The NWT renders nephesh as "life" three times in this verse, consistent with verse 11. Standard literal English versions retain "soul" — "the soul of every flesh is the blood thereof" (KJV). The flattening of nephesh into "life" simplifies the verse for use in blood-doctrine arguments, removing the theological resonance the OT preserves elsewhere. Cumulatively, across verses 11 and 14, the NWT's choice of vocabulary makes the blood-equals-life equation look more straightforward than the Hebrew makes it.