“So you shall do to your bull and to your flock; seven days it shall be with its mother, on the eighth day you shall give it to Me” (Exodus 22:29). “You shall be holy people to Me; you shall not eat flesh of a mauled animal in the field; you shall cast it to the dog” (Exodus 22:30). “So you shall do to your bull,” “from the eighth day on [it may be accepted as an offering made by fire to the Lord]” (Leviticus 22:27).
Likewise, it is written: “On the eighth day you shall give it to Me.”23Just as in Leviticus the meaning of the verse is that from the eighth day and on the animal is acceptable as an offering, that is the meaning here as well; the verse is not stating that one is required to offer it on the eighth day. If you give, you are not giving from yours, but from Mine.24The midrash interprets the phrase “you shall give it to Me” as though it said “you shall give it; it is Mine.”
Likewise it says: “For everything comes from You, and from Your hand we have given to You” (I Chronicles 29:14). If you do so, “you shall be holy people to Me” (Exodus 22:30). Likewise it is written: “Israel is sacred to the Lord, the first of His crop” (Jeremiah 2:3). Just as this pile of grain, it stands and the priest descends into it and takes teruma from its midst, so too, the Holy One blessed be He made the world into a pile and took our ancestors, who are His teruma, as it is stated: “Israel is sacred to the Lord, the first of His crop.”25Teruma is also referred to as the first of the crop (see Deuteronomy 18:4).
Consequently, the Holy One blessed be He said to Israel: ‘Because you are teruma, you do not have permission to eat a mauled animal,’ as it is stated: “You shall not eat flesh of a mauled animal in the field; you shall cast it to the dog.” Why to a dog? The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘You owe it to the dogs, for when I killed the Egyptian firstborn and the Egyptians were sitting all night and burying their dead, the dogs were barking at them, but they did not bark at Israel, as it is stated: “But for all the children of Israel, a dog will not whet its tongue” (Exodus 11:7).
Therefore, you owe it to the dogs, as it is stated: “You shall cast it to the dog.” Dogs, when one barks all of them gather and bark for nothing, but you shall not do so, because you are sacred people, as it is stated: “You shall be holy people to Me.”’