The Second Branch of Uncleanness

The last few chapters have followed the first branch of uncleanness: birth, skin, the marriage bed, the dead, and the camp. These are things a person can see and touch, such as a carcass, a sore, or a grave.

Chapter 21 showed that the Torah has a second branch as well. Sexual sin, idols, and bloodshed also make a person unclean, and the Torah uses the same word for them. Many Christians readily grant that this second branch still matters, since nobody thinks idolatry has become clean. But they treat the two branches as if they had nothing to do with each other, one “ceremonial” and gone, the other “moral” and still standing.

Scripture does not draw the line there. It uses one vocabulary for both branches, and it carries that vocabulary from Leviticus all the way to the last pages of Revelation. This chapter traces it.

A Land That Vomits

Leviticus 18 draws to its close this way, after its list of forbidden unions and its warning against giving children to Molech:

Leviticus 18:24-28 Do not defile yourselves in any of these; for in all these the nations were defiled, which I am casting out from before you. And the land was defiled, and I visited its iniquity upon it, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep, you yourselves, my statutes (chuqqot חֻקָּה khook-kaw') and my judgments (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt'), and shall not do any of these abominations — neither the native nor the sojourner who sojourns in your midst. For all these abominations the men (ish אִישׁ eesh) of the land who were before you did, and the land was defiled. And let not the land vomit you out when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

The defilement reached past the people to the ground beneath them: “the land was defiled.” And the land did something no farmer expects soil to do, for it “vomited out its inhabitants.” This is the second branch at work: sexual sin, idolatry, and the blood of children given to Molech.

Two further details matter. The warning is for Israel too: “let not the land vomit you out when you defile it.” And the command names both groups who lived in the land, “neither the native nor the sojourner who sojourns in your midst,” so the foreigner living among God’s people stood under the same command. This uncleanness was never a Jewish custom. It was a matter between God, His land, and everyone who lived on it.

The Hebrew word for unclean in both branches is tame טָמֵא taw-may'. When the Torah was put into Greek, the unclean animals of Leviticus 11 were called akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos, and the “spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) of impurity” of Zechariah 13:2 became an akathartos spirit; for the defiling of Leviticus 18 the translators used another verb, miaino. That Greek word appears again in places many readers would not expect.

The Spirit of Impurity

Zechariah names the idols and something else in the same breath:

Zechariah 13:2 And it shall come to pass in that day, declares the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw'), I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no longer be remembered; and also the prophets and the spirit (ruach) of impurity I will cause to pass from the land.

The idols and “the spirit (ruach) of impurity” are removed from the land together, “in that day.” For the prophet, uncleanness is not only a stain on an object; he speaks of a spirit of impurity.

The Gospels take up the same language. In the first chapter of Mark, Yeshua is teaching in Capernaum:

Mark 1:23-26 And there was in their synagogue a man with an akathartos(unclean) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit); and he cried out, saying: "What business do we have with each other, Yeshua of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are — the Holy One of God!" And Yeshua rebuked it, saying: "Be quiet and come out of him!" Throwing him into convulsions, the akathartos(unclean) pneuma(spirit) cried out with a loud voice and came out of him.

Akathartos is the word the Greek Leviticus uses for the animals God did not give as food and for their carcasses. Mark uses it eleven times, every time for a spirit, and Matthew and Luke use it too. The Gospel writers did not reach for a new word for these spirits; they used the Torah’s own word for the unclean.

Scripture, then, uses the same word for unclean food and for unclean spirits, and the purity laws reach beyond the body.

The Swept, Empty House

Yeshua told a short story about what happens after an unclean spirit leaves:

Matthew 12:43-45 Now when the akathartos(unclean) pneuma(spirit) goes out from a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says: 'I will return to my house from which I came,' and coming it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with itself seven other pneuma(spirits) more evil than itself, and entering in they dwell there, and the last state of that person becomes worse than the first — so will it also be with this evil generation."

Picture an apartment after the tenant has moved out. It has been cleaned, swept, and put in order, and a sign in the window says that it is vacant. The cleaning is not the trouble; the vacancy is. The spirit “finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order,” clean but empty, and it comes back with seven worse than itself.

Cleansing alone is not enough. The house must be filled, and Ezekiel had already said what fills it. God promised to cleanse His people “from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols,” and then: “my spirit (ruach) I will put within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke)” (Ezekiel 36:25, 27). When the Spirit of God moves in, the house is no longer empty, and He does not leave the statutes outside. He causes us to walk in them.

Babylon at the End

The Bible’s last book brings the same words back. From the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet come “three akathartos(impure, unclean) pneumata(spirits) like frogs” (Revelation 16:13). And when Babylon falls, the angel describes what she has become:

Revelation 18:2 And he cried out with a strong voice, saying, "Fallen is Babylon the great, and she has become a dwelling place of demon(individual evil spirits to be expelled)s and a prison of every akathartos(impure, unclean) pneuma(spirit) and a prison of every akathartos(impure, unclean) and hated bird.

Unclean spirits and unclean birds stand side by side, and the birds are of the very kind Leviticus set apart:

Leviticus 11:13-19 And these you shall hold in detestation among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are a detestable thing: the eagle, and the bearded vulture, and the osprey; and the kite, and the falcon after its kind; every raven after its kind; and the daughter of the ostrich, and the night-hawk, and the sea-mew, and the hawk after its kind; and the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl; and the horned owl, and the pelican, and the carrion-vulture; and the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat.

At the end of the story, Scripture still speaks the language of Leviticus 11.

Then comes the call:

Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you do not synkoinoneo συγκοινωνέω soong-koy-no-neh'-o(co-participate) in her sins and so that you do not receive her plagues,

The word for “co-participate” is synkoinoneo (συγκοινωνέω), to share in something with someone.

Touch No Unclean Thing

The call did not begin in Revelation. Paul gave it to a church of Gentile believers in Corinth, and he opened with a question:

2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) and anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness), or what koinonia κοινωνία koy-nohn-ee'-ah(fellowship) has light with darkness?

Righteousness stands on one side and anomia(Torah-lessness) on the other. Anomia, as Chapter 8 showed, is life without the Torah. Paul goes on:

2 Corinthians 6:16-18; 7:1 Or what agreement has the naos ναός nah-os'(temple, inner-sanctuary) of God with idols? For you are the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the living God; just as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." "Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate," says the Lord, "and do not touch what is akatharton(unclean); and I will welcome you." "And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me," says the Lord Almighty. … Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) and pneuma(spirit), perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

“Do not touch what is akatharton(unclean)” is a quotation from Isaiah:

Isaiah 52:11 Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing; go out from her midst, be clean, you who bear the vessels of the LORD.

Paul calls Gentile believers “the naos(temple, inner-sanctuary) of the living God,” and then he applies the temple’s purity to them. He does not tell them that nothing is unclean any longer; he tells them not to touch it. The setting shows what he means here: idols, Beliar (2 Corinthians 6:15), and anomia, the second branch. Then he calls them to “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of sarx(flesh) and pneuma(spirit),” of flesh and of spirit both.

Ephesians speaks of the same uncleanness, with the same word, akathartos:

Ephesians 5:3-7 But sexual immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among hagioi ἅγιοι hag'-ee-os(holy ones); and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no sexually immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Messiah and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the orge ὀργή or-gay'(wrath) of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be metochoi(fellow-participants) with them;

Ephesians 5:11 Do not synkoinoneo(co-participate) in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them;

Sexual immorality, akatharsia ἀκαθαρσία ak-ath-ar-see'-ah, greed, and the idolater: this is the second branch of uncleanness carried straight into the church. Ephesians 5:11 also uses the very word we read in Revelation, “Do not synkoinoneo(co-participate).” Paul writing to the Ephesians and the voice from heaven over Babylon give the same command in the same word: do not share in it, but come out.

Trained at the Table

Both branches are called by the same words, and the call at the end of the Bible is the same call. A people who never learned to separate the unclean from the clean at their own table will find it hard to hear the call to come out of Babylon.

Uncleanness, then, is real in the land, in the body, and in the unseen world. With both branches in view, we can now open the verses most often used to say that a believer may eat anything. The first comes from Mark, and as Mark tells it, the story begins with a question about hands.