Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire; its head with its legs, and with the inner parts thereof.
Read Chapter 12
Cyril of Jerusalem
AD 386
Children of purity and disciples of chastity, let us celebrate the praises of the virginborn God with lips all pure. Being counted worthy to partake of the flesh of the spiritual Lamb, let us take the head with the feet, understanding the head as the divinity and the feet as the humanity.
Raw. Some nations delighted in raw flesh, in the feasts of Bacchus, who hence received the title of Omadios. (Porphyr. de Abstin. 3.) The Hebrew term na, occurs nowhere else, and may perhaps signify half-roasted or boiled, semicoctum. It cannot be inferred from this prohibition, that the Hebrews commonly lived on such food.
In water, as the other victims usually were. (1 Kings ii. 13; 2 Paralipomenon xxxv. 13.)
You shall eat, is not in the original, nor in the Septuagint. We may supply it, however, or "you shall roast all, head", but in eating, you shall avoid breaking any bone, as the Septuagint and Syriac express it, (ver. 10,) and as we read, ver. 46, and Numbers ix. 12. These were to be burnt, that they might not be profaned. (Calmet)
“You shall eat it with its head and shanks and inner organs.” To me, the head seems to be that of the Lamb, written of in St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” The shanks represent the human nature that he deigned to assume for our salvation. Another interpretation, however, is also possible. The head may be taken to signify spiritual understanding; the shanks, historical narrative; the inner organs are whatever lies hidden within the letter, whatever is not perceived on the surface but is brought to light by exegetes only after they have well considered it in painstaking investigation.
