STRANGLING . This is suggested as a mode of death, Job 7:15 . The cognate verb describes the manner of Ahithophel’s self-inflicted death ( 2 Samuel 17:23 , EV [Note: English Version.] ‘hanged himself’; cf. Matthew 27:5 of Judas). The idea conveyed is death by suffocation, not necessarily produced by suspension. Elsewhere, where hanging is mentioned in EV [Note: English Version.] as a mode of punishment, some form of impalement is intended (see Crimes and Punishments, § 10 ).
In the pastoral letter sent down by the Council of Jerusalem to the early converts from heathenism, these are instructed to abstain inter alia ‘from blood and from things strangled ’ ( Acts 15:29 , cf. Acts 15:20; Acts 21:25 ). Both belong to the category of Jewish food taboo (Food, § 10 ). The former refers to the prohibition against eating meat which had not been thoroughly drained of the blood, the second to the similar taboo affecting the flesh of animals not slaughtered according to the very minute Rabbinical rules then in force. Thus in the Talmudic treatise Chullin , specially devoted to this subject, it is laid down (i. 2) that ‘any one may slaughter … with any instrument except a harvest-sickle, a saw, etc., because these strangle ,’ in other words, they do not make the clean incision required for proper slaughter. ‘What is strangled’ ( Acts 15:20 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) or strangled meat is thus seen to be a current technical term of the Jewish shçkhîtâ or ritual of slaughter. In modern phrase the Gentile converts were to eat only kôsher meat.
A. R. S. Kennedy.