The Targum Jonathan delivers one of its harshest legal rulings in Leviticus 17: anyone who slaughters a sacrificial animal outside the Tabernacle is treated "as if he had shed innocent blood." The Hebrew Bible says the person's guilt will be "blood reckoned to that man." The Targum equates unsanctioned slaughter with murder.
The background is idol worship. The Targum makes explicit what the Hebrew implies: the Israelites had been sacrificing "on the face of the field" to demons. The word used is not "spirits" or "other gods" but entities "which are like unto demons." This centralization of sacrifice was not administrative convenience. It was an emergency measure against an ongoing demonic cult.
The blood prohibition gets theological grounding: "the subsistence of the life of all flesh is in the blood." The Targum repeats this principle twice, framing it not as dietary law but as metaphysical fact. Blood is life. Consuming it means consuming another creature's animating force—and that force belongs exclusively to God.
The chapter covers hunting as well. If an Israelite hunts permitted game—beast or fowl—he must pour out the blood and cover it with dust. The Targum adds a condition: "if what he hath killed be not destroyed or strangled, let the blood be covered." The method of killing matters. A strangled animal has its blood trapped inside, making it unfit.
For eating torn or strangled flesh, the Targum prescribes washing in "forty seahs of water"—the standard immersion pool measurement. But then comes a sharp addition: "if he be perverse and will not wash, nor bathe his flesh, he shall bear his transgression." Defiance transforms a minor impurity into a permanent sin.