Uncleanness

Leviticus 12-15

            What do childbirth, skin disease, mold and mildew, and bodily discharges have in common? They all, in the Israelite mind, have some echo of death. A woman is unclean after childbirth not because of the birth, but because of the loss of blood and bodily fluids that attends that birth. A skin disease and an outbreak of mildew reminds one of rot and decay. A discharge of fluids represents a loss of vitality. Anything that looks of death makes one unclean because the Lord is the God of life. That seems to be the underlying thinking.

            Now, if you want an explanation of the details, I feel like we’re groping in the dark. Why is a woman unclean for 7 days for a bearing a boy, but 14 days for bearing a girl? My study Bible suggests that’s because she has to present the boy for circumcision on the 8^th day. Well and good, but that doesn’t explain why she has to stay away a total of 80 days for a girl and only 40 days for a boy. What’s the deal with the color of hair within an area of blighted skin? On that page in my study Bible there are exactly zero notes. What’s going on with the strange rite for purification from a skin disease? Kill a bird over a pot of water, dip a live bird, some yarn and some leaves in that water, sprinkle the defiled person and set the bird free. That seems weird. (We can probably explain that one a little: the first bird is a form of sacrifice, the cedar wood, hyssop, and yarn make some kind of tool for sprinkling the water, and the live bird flies off, symbolically carrying the uncleanness with them.)

            These are definitely chapters where most readers will be best served by trying to see the forest for the trees, by taking the broad view and seeing that uncleanness often has some association with death, a condition that excludes one from the presence of the God of life.

            Why is it in the Bible? What does it have to do with us? The book of Hebrews mentions that the blood of Jesus is sprinkled on us to cleanse us from a guilty conscience. So, perhaps the take away from Leviticus is as simple as rejoicing in the once for all sacrifice of Jesus that makes us holy and clean and gives us uninterrupted access to the Father.