This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.
11For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.
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.11For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.12Therefore I have said to the children of Israel, “No person among you may eat blood, nor may any stranger who lives as a foreigner among you eat blood.”
The fulfillment reading
How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.
The messianic-fulfillment reading takes Leviticus 17:11's principle that atonement is accomplished through blood as the theological foundation the New Testament applies to Jesus' death. On this view, Jesus' words over the cup at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:28) and the Markan saying that casts his death as a redemptive ransom offered on behalf of others (Mark 10:45) identify his death as the substitutionary atonement to which the sacrificial system pointed. Readers in this tradition hold that Christ's death is not a prohibited human sacrifice but a unique, voluntary, divinely initiated act that transcends the Torah's categories. The Hebrew Bible's ban on human sacrifice is taken to underscore rather than undercut that uniqueness. The blood-atonement principle is thus seen as reaching its ultimate expression in Christ's shed blood.
The counter-reading
How this passage is read within its own context.
The critical reading holds that Leviticus 17:11 is a theological rationale within the Priestly legal corpus for two related rules — not consuming blood, and reserving blood for altar atonement — and not a predictive oracle. On this view the New Testament authors interpreted Jesus' death using the inherited sacrificial vocabulary available within Judaism, which is theological reflection rather than evidence of prediction. Readers in this tradition note that the Hebrew Bible explicitly condemns human sacrifice (e.g., Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 12:31; Jeremiah 7:31), so the atonement framework was built around animal sacrifice within the cult. Mapping it onto a human death, they argue, runs against the grain of the cited text's own framework. The connection is therefore read as applied theology, not fulfilled prophecy.
How the New Testament uses this passage
Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.
Neither Matthew 26:28 nor Mark 10:45 quotes Leviticus 17:11; both reuse its blood-atonement theology conceptually, making this a thematic echo rather than a citation.
Neither Matthew 26:28 nor Mark 10:45 quotes Leviticus 17:11; both reuse its blood-atonement theology conceptually, making this a thematic echo rather than a citation.
