Purity of the Body

Many Christians who have read the whole Bible will admit that they skimmed Leviticus 12 to 15. Chapters on childbirth, skin disease, and bodily discharges seemed embarrassing, or primitive, or simply beside the point.

The claim behind that habit is rarely spoken aloud, but it is widely held: “These chapters are ancient taboos. Calling a new mother unclean sounds like punishing her for having a baby. Whatever they meant to Israel, they have nothing to say to the church.”

Chapter 21 of this book showed that the Torah’s uncleanness runs in two branches, and these chapters lie at the heart of the first, the uncleanness of food, body, and contact. They deserve a slow reading, because they place the ordinary life of a family under God’s word.

Birth Is Not Sin

Leviticus 12:2-4 Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: A woman (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw'), when she conceives seed and bears a male, then she shall be unclean seven days; as the days of the impurity of her sickness she shall be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And thirty days and three days she shall remain in the blood of purification; she shall not touch any holy thing, and she shall not come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are fulfilled.

For a son, the time is seven days and then thirty-three more; for a daughter, it is twice as long (12:5). Through all those days the mother keeps away from holy things and from the sanctuary.

What the chapter does not say matters just as much. It does not say that she sinned, and it does not call the child a curse. The first words God spoke to the first man and woman were a blessing and a command, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), and nothing in Leviticus takes them back. The mother is given days set apart at home, away from the sanctuary, and then she comes to the tent with her offering (12:6-8).

The mother of the Messiah kept this chapter to the letter.

Luke 2:22-24 And when the days of their purification according to the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord — as it is written in the nomos(law) of the Lord, "Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord" — and to offer a sacrifice according to what is stated in the nomos(law) of the Lord: "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."

“A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” is the offering Leviticus 12:8 allows when “her hand does not find enough for a lamb.” Mary was poor, and she kept the Torah of the woman who bears, just as it was written. Luke calls those weeks simply “the days of their purification according to the nomos(law) of Moses.” Giving birth to the Messiah had made her unclean for a time, but it had not made her sinful.

Outside the Camp

The next two chapters concern tzaraat צָרַעַת tsaw-rah'-ath, the skin disease usually translated leprosy, and they describe how the one who had it was to live.

Leviticus 13:45-46 And the leprous one in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be torn, and his head shall go loose, and he shall cover over the upper lip, and he shall cry, "Unclean, unclean." All the days that the plague is in him he shall be unclean; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone; outside the camp shall his dwelling be.

Long before anyone knew what a germ was, the Torah set the sick apart. It sent the priest to examine the skin again and again, and it even had garments and the walls of houses inspected for a spreading growth (Leviticus 13–14).

A sign on a hospital door that reads “Isolation” accuses no one. Nobody walking past supposes that the patient inside is wicked; the sign is there to protect the patient and everyone else. The man who cried “Unclean, unclean” was doing the same thing, warning others so that the camp stayed whole.

At times tzaraat fell as a judgment. Miriam spoke against Moses, “and behold, Miriam was leprous, as snow” (Numbers 12:10). She was shut out of the camp for seven days, “and the people did not journey until Miriam was gathered in” (12:15). King Uzziah, full of pride, walked into the temple to burn incense, a service that belonged only to the priests, the sons of Aaron.

2 Chronicles 26:19; 26:21 And Uzziah was furious, and in his hand was a censer to burn incense; and in his fury with the priests, the leprosy broke out in his forehead before the priests in the house of the LORD, beside the altar of incense. … And Uzziah the king was a leper until the day of his death, and dwelt in a house of separation, a leper, for he was cut off from the house of the LORD; and Jotham his son was over the king's house, judging the people of the land.

The king who forced his way into the holy place was “cut off from the house of the LORD,” and he never entered it again.

The Touch and the Priest

Then a leper came to Yeshua.

Matthew 8:2-4 And behold, a leper came and was worshiping Him, saying: "Lord, if You are willing, You are able to make me clean." And stretching out His hand, Yeshua touched him, saying: "I am willing — be cleansed" — and immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Yeshua said to him: "See that you tell no one, but go, show yourself to the priest and present the doron δῶρον do'-ron(offering, gift) that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."

Under the Torah, touching a leper would have made a man unclean, but here the touch worked the other way. The leprosy did not pass to Yeshua; His cleansing passed to the leper. The word is katharizo καθαρίζω kath-ar-id'-zo, to make clean.

Then comes the part that is so often passed over: “Go, show yourself to the priest and present the doron(offering, gift) that Moses commanded.” Yeshua had just done what no priest could do, and He sent the man straight to the priest to do what Leviticus said.

Leviticus 14:2-4 This shall be the Torah of the leper in the day of his cleansing: and he shall be brought to the priest. And the priest shall go out to outside the camp; and the priest shall look, and behold, the plague of leprosy is healed in the leper, then the priest shall command (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw'), and he shall take for the one being cleansed two living (chai חַי khah'-ee) clean birds, and cedar wood, and scarlet of worm, and hyssop.

The Messiah who healed the leper upheld “the Torah of the leper in the day of his cleansing.” Far from cancelling the chapter, He told the man to keep it, “as a testimony to them.”

The Marriage Bed

Leviticus 15 reaches into the most private part of life.

Leviticus 15:16-19 And a man (ish אִישׁ eesh), when an emission of seed goes out from him, then he shall bathe all his flesh (basar) in water, and be unclean before(ad עד) the evening. And every garment and every skin on which is the emission of seed shall be washed in water, and be unclean before(ad עד) the evening. And a woman (ishah) with whom a man (ish) lies, an emission of seed, they shall both bathe in water, and be unclean before(ad עד) the evening. And a woman (ishah), when she has a discharge, and her discharge in her flesh (basar) is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity seven days; and everyone who touches her shall be unclean before(ad עד) the evening.

After a husband and wife come together, they both bathe and wait until evening, and a woman in her monthly flow is set apart for seven days. Leviticus 18 goes further and adds a prohibition, not only a washing.

Leviticus 18:19 And to a woman (ishah) in the separation of her uncleanness you shall not approach to uncover her nakedness.

So even the closest life of a husband and wife is placed under God’s word: washing, waiting until evening, and a time of separation each month called niddah נִדָּה nid-daw'. Leviticus 15 also gives the reason.

Leviticus 15:31 And you shall separate the sons of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile My tabernacle (mishkan מִשְׁכָּן mish-kawn') that is in their midst.

Here the purity of the body is tied to the dwelling of God among His people. The concern is not shame but nearness: these laws are about living close to the Holy One.

The Apostles and the Body

The apostles carried this into the church’s teaching on sexual life, and they used the Torah’s own word.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 For this is the thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of epithymia ἐπιθυμία ep-ee-thoo-mee'-ah(lust, craving), like the nations who do not know God; and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for the purpose of akatharsia ἀκαθαρσία ak-ath-ar-see'-ah(impurity), but in sanctification.

The key word comes in the last sentence. Akatharsia (ἀκαθαρσία) is the noun form of akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos, the word for the Torah’s uncleanness. Paul tells believers from the nations that God’s will is their sanctification, and that each of them must know how to “possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of epithymia(lust, craving), like the nations who do not know God.”

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Flee sexual immorality; every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a naos ναός nah-os'(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your pneuma(spirit), which are God's.

In Leviticus 15, uncleanness defiled “My tabernacle (mishkan) that is in their midst.” In Corinthians, the believer’s own body is the naos, the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells.

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will krino κρίνω kree'-no(judge) the sexually immoral and the adulterous.

The marriage bed is honored rather than despised, and yet it is not lawless, for God Himself guards it.

Leviticus 12 to 15, then, was never primitive. In these chapters a mother is given days set apart, the sick are protected, the camp is guarded, and a husband and wife live their closest life before God. And when Yeshua touched the untouchable, He sent the man away to keep the Torah.

One uncleanness remained, heavier than all of these: the uncleanness of death.