כי תועבת מצרים וכו'. מאוסים היו רועי צאן בעיניהם כי הצאן היה דבר מאוס לאכילה כמו שמאוסין העזים לאכילה בהרבה מקומות. וכן לא יוכלון לאכול את העברים לחם כי תועבה היא למצרים מאוסין היו אנשי עבר הנהר בעיניהם ולכן קשה להם לאכול עמהם וכן הן נזבח את תועבת מצרים לעיניהם נזבח בפניהם מה שהוא מאוס להם ולא יסקלונו יהרגונו לא נאמר אלא יסקלונו. ד"א שמעתי כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה וזן עצמו מן הצאן ואוכל אותם כי היא ע"ז שלהם ידועה מלשון הרעה אותי דמתרגמינן דזן יתי: כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה צאן, “for the Egyptians despised people whose vocation was the rising and tending of sheep. The reason they did so was because they hated sheep meat, i.e. mutton, just as they hated goats’ meat. This was something not unique to the Egyptians. This is also why they could not sit at the same table as the Hebrews when the latter were being served lamb. They harboured a deep aversion for anyone stemming from the Euphrates-Tigris region. They considered the Sumerians as a lower class of human beings. (Exodus 8,9) The Hebrews claimed that they would insult the Egyptians if they slaughtered their animals as service to their G–d inside the boundaries of the land of Egypt. They would risk being stoned by them. It is interesting that they did not refer to being just killed, but they spelled out by which method they would be killed, a method which in Jewish law is the most severe kind of death penalty. Our author states that he has also heard a different interpretation of our verse. The Egyptians considered anyone slaughtering sheep or goats and eating their meat as guilty of the kind of perversion that would stamp such a person as a subhuman species. We find the word רועה, which we normally translate as “tending,” i.e. shepherding, also used by the Targum for “providing food” (transitive) on Genesis 48,15 by Yaakov in his blessings for his children when on his deathbed.