Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 15:1
And the LORD spoke unto Moses and to Aaron, saying,
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This chapter would seem to take its place more naturally before Lev 12:1-8, with the subject of which it is inmediately connected. Compare especially Lev 12:2 with Lev 15:19. It stands here between two chapters, with neither of which has it any close connection.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XV
Laws concerning uncleanness of men, 1-12.
Mode of cleansing, 13-15.
Of uncleanness, accidental and casual, 16-15.
Laws concerning the uncleanness of women, 10-27.
Mode of cleansing, 28-30.
Recapitulation of the ordinances relative to the preceding
cases, 31-33.
NOTES ON CHAP. XV
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron,…. Aaron is spoken to as well Moses, because some of these purifications, after mentioned, depended on the priest, as the affair of profluvious men and women, as Gersom observes:
saying; as follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Uncleanness of Secretions. – These include (1) a running issue from a man (Lev 15:2-15); (2) involuntary emission of seed (Lev 15:16, Lev 15:17), and the emission of seed in sexual intercourse (Lev 15:18); (3) the monthly period of a woman (Lev 15:19-24); (4) a diseased issue of blood from a woman (Lev 15:25-30). They consist, therefore, of two diseased and two natural secretions from the organs of generation.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Ceremonial Purification. | B. C. 1490. |
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean. 3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his uncleanness. 4 Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean. 5 And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 6 And he that sitteth on any thing whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 8 And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 9 And what saddle soever he rideth upon that hath the issue shall be unclean. 10 And whosoever toucheth any thing that was under him shall be unclean until the even: and he that beareth any of those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 11 And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 12 And the vessel of earth, that he toucheth which hath the issue, shall be broken: and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water. 13 And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean. 14 And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, and come before the LORD unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and give them unto the priest: 15 And the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the LORD for his issue. 16 And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. 17 And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. 18 The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.
We have here the law concerning the ceremonial uncleanness that was contracted by running issues in men. It is called in the margin (v. 2) the running of the reins: a very grievous and loathsome disease, which was, usually the effect and consequent of wantonness and uncleanness, and a dissolute course of life, filling men’s bones with the sins of their youth, and leaving them to mourn at the last, when all the pleasures of their wickedness have vanished, and nothing remains but the pain and anguish of a rotten carcase and a wounded conscience. And what fruit has the sinner then of those things whereof he has so much reason to be ashamed? Rom. vi. 21. As modesty is an ornament of grace to the head and chains about the neck, so chastity is health to the navel and marrow to the bones; but uncleanness is a wound and dishonour, the consumption of the flesh and the body, and a sin which is often its own punishment more than any other. It was also sometimes inflicted by the righteous hand of God for other sins, as appears by David’s imprecation of a curse upon the family of Joab, for the murder of Abner. 2 Sam. iii. 29, Let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an issue, or is a leper. A vile disease for vile deserts. Now whoever had this disease upon him, 1. He was himself unclean, v. 2. He must not dare to come near the sanctuary, it was at his peril if he did, nor might he eat of the holy things. This signified the filthiness of sin, and of all the productions of our corrupt nature, which render us odious to God’s holiness, and utterly unfit for communion with him. Out of a pure heart well kept are the issues of life (Prov. iv. 23), but out of an unclean heart comes that which is defiling, Mat 12:34; Mat 12:35. 2. He made every person and thing unclean that he touched, or that touched him, v. 4-12. His bed, and his chair, and his saddle, and every thing that belonged to him, could not be touched without a ceremonial uncleanness contracted, which a man must remain conscious to himself of till sunset, and from which he could not be cleansed without washing his clothes, and bathing his flesh in water. This signified the contagion of sin, the danger we are in of being polluted by conversing with those that are polluted, and the need we have with the utmost circumspection to save ourselves from this untoward generation. 3. When he was cured of the disease, yet he could not be cleansed from the pollution without a sacrifice, for which he was to prepare himself by seven days’ expectation after he was perfectly clear from his distemper, and by bathing in spring water, v. 13-15. This signified the great gospel duties of faith and repentance, and the great gospel privileges of the application of Christ’s blood to our souls for our justification and his grace for our sanctification. God has promised to sprinkle clean water upon us, and to cleanse us from all our filthiness, and has appointed us by repentance to wash and make ourselves clean: he has also provided a sacrifice of atonement, and requires us by faith to interest ourselves in that sacrifice; for it is the blood of Christ his Son that cleanses us from all sin, and by which atonement is made for us, that we may have admission into God’s presence and may partake of his favour.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
LEVITICUS- CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Verses 1-12:
“Issue,” zob, “flowing.” The term occurs 13 times in the Hebrew text, all in chapter 15. Some suggest the “issue” in verses 2-15 is identical with the disease of gonorrhea, or some similar disease. It seems unlikely that such stringent laws should be enacted merely for a mere boil or common carbuncle.
One who had this “issue” was under the three following restrictions:
1. He himself was ceremonially unclean; 2. He was not allowed to come near the sanctuary; 3. Every person and thing which came in contact with him in any way was unclean.
These strict provisions typify the loathsome and degrading nature of sin. It defiles the one who is infected thereby, and it causes defilement of those with whom he comes in contact, 2Co 6:14-17.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Secret Physical Impurities
SUGGESTIVE READINGS
Secret impurities, whether of men or women, are carefully discriminated here as resulting from guilty sexual intercourse, and as the effect of natural infirmity. God has stern thoughts for the licentious, He brands him as polluted and polluting, and interdicts from all privileges those who have become basely defiled.
Yet even where no moral vileness attaches to the uncleanness, where the impurity is the consequence of physical weakness and natural processes, God enforces exclusion. For although the Lord is very pitiful to our weaknesses, knows our frame, and remembers that we are dust, commiserates our secret maladies, and breaks not the bruised reed, nevertheless, only the clean can be allowed free enjoyment of social and spiritual favours within the camp and congregation of His holy nation.
Considering even the sanitary value of these prohibitions and laws we discern Gods wisdom and benignity, for they placed the ban on self-destroying indulgences and arrested contamination of loathsome diseases. But as a witness to the necessity of moral and spiritual purity in the person and habits of Gods people these restrictions are full of significance. Cleanse thou me from secret faults.
HOMILETIC HINTS
I. The distressing vileness of fallen human nature. An ever-flowing stream of uncleanness. While unsanctified by grace, not only is it true concerning the vile body that in us, that is in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing, but all its habits and infirmities are corrupt and corrupting. What occasion is left for glorying in the flesh? Let those who vaunt the dignity of human nature see its revolting side in this chapter. Then every mouth shall be stopped, and all become guilty before God.
II. The stainless sanctity required in Gods presence. Any soil, stain, or mark of impurity must close the unclean from coming near where He dwells. Jehovah had associated Himself with this people, was in their midst; and as He could not bear defilement He insists on the most rigorous sanctity, in their persons, their privacy, their homes, their worship. It carries its appeal to us that we perfect holiness in the fear of God. Wash you, make you clean, put away your evil from before mine eyes.
III. The bounteous provisions made for the sinners cleansing. The redeeming blood and purifying water are again available atonement through Christ, and sanctification through the Spirit and the Word; these are efficacious for even vilest stains and most loathsome impurities.
Thus, while in the body, whose every habit and infirmity affirms its natural corruptness, we can hope for renewing grace through the redemption and washing which the gospel offers to all who will wash and be clean.
We have the blood of Christ! said Schliermacher, and so passed away to glory.
NOTES
i. Indecencies both shock a virtuous mind, and are signally offensive to Divine Holiness.
ii. The human frame, formed for noble uses, may be most basely degraded by forbidden indulgences
iii. Low passions, if allowed sway, inflict miseries on others, entailing them in the humiliation of communicated uncleanness.
iv. Hidden physical impurities are as minutely marked by the Omniscient Eye as are the flagrant leprous taints.
v. A more emphatic loathing is noticeable in Gods denunciation of these secret sexual uncleannesses than of any other forms of human defilement.
vi. Our Lords healing of the womans secret malady (Mar. 5:25; Mar. 5:27) may be allowed to denote the Source of help to all who ask deliverance from corrupting weaknesses and vicious tendencies.
vii. Infinite pity has provided expiation for, and cleansing from, even our basest sins, equally as for our natural infirmities.
SECTIONAL HOMILIES
Topic: THE ODIOUSNESS OF PERSONAL IMPURITY (Lev. 15:1-14; Lev. 15:19-27)
These regulations, which at first sight may appear indelicate and unnecessary, were holy, just and true. Among the licentious idolatrous Egyptians Israel was to become a model for purity; no secret sin of any kind tolerated among them. Laws necessary to the physical and moral well being of the whole nation ought not to be considered offensive. A vast multitude was to be conducted through the wilderness with a crowded encampment of tents. Nothing, in such a case, would keep them pure and make social life tolerable but such rigid legislation as the Mosaic regulations enjoined. These regulations:
I. ASSERTED THE NEED OF SCRUPULOUS PERSONAL PURITY.
Not only were the people to be on their guard against diseases such as leprosy, which revealed itself by outward manifestations, but against secret impurities which might be known only to the persons suffering therefrom. Thus the encampment of the wilderness would be kept from degenerating into a hotbed of impurity and disease. Into whatever flagrant sins the Jews as a nation fell, they never became notorious for impurity or immorality, and, to this day, the ranks of the licentious are conspicuously free from members of the family of Abraham. The gospel is not less rigid in its demands for personal purity; indeed, it probes the moral nature of man more deeply, and demands purity of thought and desire as well as of word and deed. Unaccomplished vicious purposes are regarded as performed. The gospel condemns every species of impurity that would defile the body, and teaches higher morality than the ceremonial law ever reached.
II. SUGGESTED THE NEED OF COMPLETE MORAL SPOTLESSNESS.
Having to repair to the priest; and, when cleansed, to appear before the Lord, would naturally suggest to the mind the necessity of absolute purity of heart in the service of Jehovah. He who demanded the complete removal of all pollution from the physical frame, must require truth and purity in the human heart. All sin is a diseased and wasteful outflowing of the vitality of the soul. As none were too impure to apply to the priest, no case so desperate but might be cured, so the vilest of the vile may repair to our Great High Priest, who is able and willing to save to the uttermost of human need, in all the world, through all time.F. W. B.
Topic: THE CONSEQUENCES OF PERSONAL IMPURITY (Lev. 15:13-18; Lev. 15:28-33)
The laws of nature cannot be set aside, or perverted, without the infliction of penalties upon the delinquent. This world is a place, though not the place of punishment for sin. Impurity of life entails weakness, suffering, shame; disgrace and deprivation were the penalty borne by those ceremonially defiled, teaching us
I. THAT PERSONAL IMPURITY NATURALLY ENTAILS DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES.
The body becomes deteriorated, the stamina reduced, when vices of a secret character work in the dark at the basis of life. The mind becomes enfeebled, the soul debased. The sensualist and impure carry the brand of their iniquity upon their countenance, signs of their immoral character in their gait. Personal impurity bars the gate to heaven! for there nothing that defileth or worketh abomination can enter. Its consequences extend to others; for morally unclean persons carry contamination wherever they go, as the law declared the unclean did in the cases before us. The Jews were taught that the slightest touch conveyed defilement; so, sinful influences, however apparently slight, vitiate and convey moral infection. Blessed be God we are taught
II. THAT THE CONSEQUENCES OF PERSONAL IMPURITY MAY BE ARRESTED AND REMOVED.
Persons and things defiled by contact with the unclean could be cleansed by being bathed in water, and the presentation of two clean live birds for an atonement. Thus, not only the unclean persons could obtain cleansing, but the entail of their corrupt influences could be stayed. The stains of guilt, the course of sin, can only be arrested and removed by the intervention of the Lord. The consequences of sin in our world can only be counteracted by the sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost, and the sacrificial life of the spotless Lamb of God.
Note 1: The Laws respecting uncleanness could not have been invented by man; for human nature does not voluntarily inflict penalties upon itself, does not bring its vices into the light of day, and arraign them at the bar of public opinion; for, men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.
Note 2: Instead of sin flowing secretly from our words and deeds, corrupting ourselves, and contaminating others, light is to shine from us, pure, cheerful, penetrating, divine. Thus shall our lives redound to the glory of God, and contribute towards the moral regeneration of our race.F. W. B.
OUTLINES ON VERSES OF CHAPTER 15
Lev. 15:2.Theme: THE SECRET FLOW OF SIN. When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.
Jehovah demands purity of body, as well as of mind and heart, in those who profess to be His people, and draw near to Him in sacred worship. Our bodies, not to be despised or neglected, but kept pure, as the handiwork of God, and as the dwelling-place of the human soul. The uncleanness here spoken of, probably the outcome of secret wantonness, or open licentiousness, or self-pollution. Secret sins, witnessed by no one but ourselves and God, vitiate the springs of life, and waste the substance of which our bodies are composed. Thus the Moral Governor of the universe has set His inevitable stigma upon all wrong-doing. By this statute we have suggested
I. THAT SIN IS AN IMMORAL ISSUE FROM WITHIN MAN. Not a complexion, that may easily be changed; not an excrescence, that clings to the surface only; but a radical defilement issuing from the heart, which is the fountain of life. How disgusting and injurious sin is! How inveterate its hold upon our nature! Flowing from within, it often escapes detection, and defies all merely human remedies for its removal. In us, that is in our flesh, there dwelleth no good thing; when we would do good evil is present with us. Sin is not to be got rid of by change of scenery or society. Those who retreat from the worldhermits, monks, nuns, etc.carry their evil propensities with them, and the secret flow of sin does not cease. However moral the outward life may be, out of the heart will flow secret pride, unbelief, lust, evil thoughts, which defile the soul and burden the conscience with guilt.
II. THAT SIN THUS POLLUTES EVERY THING IT COMES IN CONTACT WITH. Whatever the persons mentioned in this chapter touched became unclean; showing how exceedingly contagious the defilement was. So sin pollutes and transmits itself. Like a serpent, its trail is left wherever it goes. The beauty of the world, its bounties and pleasures, have been distorted and abused by the contaminating touch of sin. Let us pray to be kept from secret sins. Suggestions to evil come up the corridors of memory, flash from pictures in the chambers of imagination. Indulgence in secret impure desires will induce and excite the flow of moral evil from the heart, wasting the powers of the soul, corrupting every circle that it touches. Sin indisposes and incapacitates men for pure society and holy service. If not stayed, consequence death. Blessed be God! sin has been atoned for, may be removed; death has been abolished, life and immortality brought to light by the gospel.F. W. B.
Lev. 15:13.Theme: THE RADICAL CURE OF SIN. And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, etc.
Though the uncleanness here mentioned was so deeply rooted and virulent, yet it was curable; the persons cured were restored to their former positions in society, and declared whole in the presence of the Lord. We learn here
I. THAT SIN CAN BE REMOVED ONLY THROUGH ATONEMENT. The priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord. The water and the blood that flowed seem to typify the fountain opened upon the cross in the Saviours side. In every instance under the law where sin was to be forgiven some pure life had to be offered as an atonement, the innocent suffered as a substitute for the guilty. Thus the roots and principles of the gospel of Christ are found in the economy of Moses.
II. THAT THE REMOVAL OF SIN CAN ONLY BE COMPLETED BY SANCTIFICATION. The ablutions of the candidate for cleansing indicated that only by persistence in the means of grace, and thoroughness of dedication to the conditions of mercy, can we become sanctified. At eventide the cleansed person became clean; so, when lifes day is over, and the shadows of death close upon the believer, the work of sanctification, which has progressed through the whole period of probation, will become complete; the vile body will be laid aside, the emancipated and immaculate spirit be present with the Lord.
Obviously, contaminating influences may be communicated unexpectedly and unintentionally. What need to pray, as David did (Psalms 51), Wash me throughly, etc. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews urged them to seek to have their bodies washed with pure water, and their hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Christ can arrest the flow of sinful influences, as He stayed the issue of the poor sufferer, recorded Mar. 5:29. The gospel dispenses with the burdensome ceremonials of the Law; but, all they pointed to is preserved and fulfilled, for the blood of Jesus Christ clear Beth from all sin.F. W. B.
ILLUSTRATIVE ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 15
SECRESY
Go to your own bosom
Knock there: and ask your heart what it doth know. SHAKESPEARE.
SELF MASTERY
I will be lord over myself. No one who cannot master himself is worthy to rule.GOETHE.
A little fire is quickly trodden out:
Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.
Henry VI.
PASSIONS
The passions may be humoured till they become our master, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny and keep the helm in the hands of reason.
CUMBERLAND.
His soul, like bark with rudder lost,
On passions changeful tide was tost;
Nor vice, nor virtue, had the power
Beyond the impression of the hour;
And O! when passion rules, how rare
The hour that falls to Virtues share!
SCOTT.
No mans body is as strong as his appetite: but heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.TILLOTSON.
What profits us that we from Heaven derive
A soul immortal; and with looks erect
Survey the stars; if, like the brutal kind,
We follow where our passions lead the way?
CLAUDIAN.
VICE
Vice stings us even in our pleasures; but virtue consoles us even in our painsCOLTON
Why is there no man who confesses his vices? It is because he has not yet laid them aside. It is a waking man only who can tell his dreams.SENECA.
Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.
POPE.
VIRTUE
Virtue that transgresses, is but patched with sin;
But sin that amends, is but patched with virtue.SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night, 1, 3.
Wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.SENECA.
God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person more than the restraint of ten vicious.MILTON.
The souls calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,
Is virtues prize.Essay on Man, POPE.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
SEXUAL UNCLEANNESS 15:133
LAWS RELATING TO TWO CASES OF DISEASE AND Two OF NATURAL CAUSE
THE FIRST CASE 15:115
TEXT 15:115
1
And Jehovah spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath an issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.
3
And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his uncleanness.
4
Every bed whereon he that hath the issue lieth shall be unclean; and everything whereon he sitteth shall be unclean.
5
And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
6
And he that sitteth on anything whereon he that hath the issue sat shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
7
And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
8
And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean, then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
9
And what saddle soever he that hath the issue rideth upon shall be unclean.
10
And whosoever toucheth anything that was under him shall be unclean until the even: and he that beareth those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
11
And whomsoever he that hath the issue toucheth, without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
12
And the earthen vessel, which he that hath the issue toucheth, shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.
13
And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes; and he shall bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.
14
And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, and come before Jehovah unto the door of the tent of meeting, and give them unto the priest:
15
and the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin-offering, and the other for a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah for his issue.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 15:115
312.
Moses and Aaron are both addressed, as in the case of the disease of leprosy (Lev. 13:1). Wherever there is only a law laid down, Moses alone hears the voice. God speaks only to the lawgiver. But, in pases where disease is prescribed for by special rules, Aaron is joined with Moses. Is this because a priesta high priestought to have much compassion, and might be more likely to learn compassion while hearing the tone of pity in which the Lord spoke of mans misery?
313.
Just what is being discussed in this text?
314.
Is this an example of venereal disease in the time of Moses? Discuss.
315.
Why consider the man yet unclean if his emission stops?
316.
Is there some moral defilement transferred to his bed by his condition? Discuss.
317.
Was there any hygienic value in the instructions given here?
318.
List all the areas of activity in which the diseased man must count himself as unclean, Why was such a regulation given?
319.
List all the areas of contact where such spells uncleanness to the one who makes contact. Why mention this?
320.
How is this uncleanness removed from utensils? persons? the diseased?
PARAPHRASE 15:115
The Lord told Moses and Aaron to give the people of Israel these further instructions: Any man who has a genital discharge is ceremonially defiled. This applies not only while the discharge is active, but also for a time after it heals. Any bed he lies on and anything he sits on is contaminated; so anyone touching the mans bed is ceremonially defiled until evening, and must wash his clothes and bathe himself. Anyone sitting on a seat the man has sat upon while defiled is himself ceremonially unclean until evening, and must wash his clothes and bathe himself. The same instructions apply to anyone touching him. Anyone he spits on is ceremonially unclean until evening, and must wash his clothes and bathe himself. Any saddle he rides on is defiled. Anyone touching or carrying anything else that was beneath him shall be defiled until evening, and must wash his clothes and bathe himself. If the defiled man touches anyone without first rinsing his hands, that person must wash his clothes and bathe himself and be defiled until evening. Any earthen pot touched by the defiled man must be broken, and every wooden utensil must be rinsed in water. When the discharge stops, he shall begin a seven-day cleansing ceremony by washing his clothes and bathing in running water. On the eighth day he shall take two turtle-doves or two young pigeons and come before the Lord at the entrance of the Tabernacle, and give them to the priest. The priest shall sacrifice them there, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; thus the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the man because of his discharge.
COMMENT 15:115
We are delighted to be able to offer the reader these splendid comments by Keil and Delitzsch. We could fain originality and the end product would be far less than what is here. We do believe we have some observations that approach originality in other areas of Leviticus, but in the fifteenth chapter we concede a deep indebtedness to these men:
Chapter 15. The Uncleanness of Secretions.These include (1) a running issue from a man (Lev. 15:2-15); (2) involuntary emission of seed (Lev. 15:16-17), and the emission of seed in sexual intercourse (Lev. 15:18); (3) the monthly period of a woman (Lev. 15:19-24); (4) a diseased issue of blood from a woman (Lev. 15:25-30). They consist, therefore, of two diseased and two natural secretions from the organs of generation.
Lev. 15:2-15 The running issue from a man is not described with sufficient clearness for us to be able to determine with certainty what disease is referred to: If a man becomes flowing out of his flesh, he is unclean in his flux. That even here the term flesh is not a euphemism for the organ of generation, as is frequently assumed, is evident from Lev. 15:13, he shall wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water, when compared with chapter Lev. 16:23-24; Lev. 16:28, etc., where flesh cannot possibly have any such meaning. The flesh is the body as in Lev. 15:7, whoever touches the flesh of him that hath the issue, as compared with Lev. 15:19, whosoever toucheth her. At the same time, the agreement between the law relating to the man with an issue and that concerning the woman with an issue (Lev. 15:19, her issue in her flesh) points unmistakably to a secretion from the sexual organs. Only the seat of the disease is not more closely defined. The issue of the man is not a hemorrhoidal disease, for nothing is said about a flow of blood; still less is it a syphilitic suppuration (gonorrhoea virulenta), for the occurrence of this at all in antiquity is very questionable; but it is either a diseased flow of semen (gonorrhoea), i.e. an involuntary flow drop by drop arising from weakness of the organ, as Jerome and the Rabbins assume, or more probably, simply blenorrhoea urethroe, a discharge of mucus arising from a catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the urethra (urethritis). The participle is expressive of continued duration. In Lev. 15:3 the uncleanness is still more closely defined: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh closes before his issue, i.e. whether the member lets the matter flow out or by closing retains it, it is his uncleanness, i.e. in the latter case as well as the former it is uncleanness to him, he is unclean. For the closing is only a temporary obstruction, brought about by some particular circumstance.Lev. 15:4. Every bed upon which he lay, and everything upon which he sat, was defiled in consequence; also every one who touched his bed (Lev. 15:5), or sat upon it (Lev. 15:6), or touched his flesh, i.e. his body (Lev. 15:7), was unclean, and had to bathe himself and wash his clothes in consequence.Lev. 15:9-10. The conveyance in which such a man rode was also unclean, as well as everything under him; and whoever touched them was defiled till the evening, and the person who carried them was to wash his clothes and bathe himself.Lev. 15:11. This also applied to every one whom the man with an issue might touch, without first rinsing his hands in water.Lev. 15:12-13. Vessels that he had touched were to be broken to pieces if they were of earthenware, and rinsed with water if they were of wood, for the reasons explained in chapter Lev. 11:33 and Lev. 6:21.Lev. 15:13-15. When he was cleansed, i.e. recovered from his issue, he was to wait seven days with regard to his purification, and then wash his clothes and bathe his body in fresh water, and be clean. On the eighth day he was to bring two turtle-doves or young pigeons, in order that the priest might prepare one as a sin-offering and the other as a burnt-offering, and make an atonement for him before the Lord for his issue.
FACT QUESTIONS 15:115
340.
Can we be sure just what disease is described in the flowing out his flesh? Discuss.
341.
What is meant by his flesh?
342.
The issue of the man is not a hemorrhoidal disease. How do we know?
343.
Is moral uncleanness involved here? Please show any indication of it in the text.
344.
How was the uncleanness to be cleansed from one who had touched the unclean?
345.
Show at least three ways this uncleanness could be spread.
346.
The sacrifices of two turtledoves or pigeons indicate no severity in the uncleanness. Discuss.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XV.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron.This chapter, which lays down the laws of uncleanness arising from issues, discusses two diseased and three natural secretions.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1. Unto Moses and to Aaron There must have been in the mind of Jehovah a reason for sometimes addressing Moses alone and sometimes addressing both Moses and Aaron. That reason is not revealed.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
This Is The Word Of Yahweh ( Lev 15:1 ).
Lev 15:1
“And Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,”
The variation between Yahweh speaking just to Moses and sometimes to both Moses and Aaron, is a sign of the authenticity of the narrative. It is unlikely that an inventor would have introduced such variation so spasmodically. Again it is emphasised that we have here Yahweh’s words, but here to both Moses and Aaron. Since Aaron’s advancement to High Priest Moses wanted him more involved, especially with matters related to the tabernacle.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Lev 15:19-33 Law Concerning an Issue of Blood – Comments – In Mat 9:18-22 a woman with an issue of blood touched the helm of Jesus’ garment, and was healed. It took an act of faith for this woman to go into the public and touch Jesus.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
In the Case of Men
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying, v. 2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, v. 3. And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, v. 4. Every bed whereon he lieth that hath the issue is unclean; and everything, v. 5. And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
v. 6. And he that sitteth on anything whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
v. 7. And he that toucheth the flesh, v. 8. And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean, v. 9. And what saddle soever, v. 10. And whosoever toucheth anything that was under him, v. 11. And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. v. 12. And the vessel of earth that he toucheth which hath the issue shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.
v. 13. And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, v. 14. And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, v. 15. and the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin-offering and the other for a burnt offering. And the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord for his issue. v. 16. And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, v. 17. And every garment and every skin whereon is the seed of copulation shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. v. 18. The woman also with whom man shall lie,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
RUNNING ISSUES FROM THE HUMAN BODY. These are the fourth cause of ceremonial uncleanness. We are not to look for a moral basis for the regulation on account of any vicious habit connected with such issues. They are foul and repulsive, and simply for that reason they are causes of ceremonial uncleanness to those who suffer from them, and to those who crone in contact with persons suffering from them.
Lev 15:2-15
The first case of an issue. It appears to be identical with the disease called by physicians gonorrhea, or, perhaps, blenorrhea (cf. Lev 22:4; Num 5:2).
Lev 15:16, Lev 15:17
The second case of an issue (cf. Lev 22:4; Deu 23:10; Gen 38:9, Gen 38:10).
Lev 15:18
The third case of an issue (cf. Exo 19:15; 1Sa 21:5; 1Co 7:5).
Lev 15:19-24
The fourth case of an issuethat of ordinary menstruation (cf. Le Lev 12:2; Lev 20:18).
Lev 15:25-30
The fifth case of an issuethat of excessive menstruation, or menstruation occurring at the wrong time. This was probably the disease of the woman “who had an issue of blood”.
Lev 15:28
If she be cleansed of her issue. In the first and the fifth cases, the presentation of two turtle-doves or two young pigeons as a sin offering and a burnt offering is enjoined as the ceremonial cleansing required. In the other eases a sacrifice is not demanded.
Lev 15:31
That they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them. The main purpose in the laws of uncleanness is to keep first God’s house and then God’s people free from the danger of defilement by foul things presenting themselves freely before him and among them. These foul things, symbolizing sinful things, create a ceremonial defilement symbolizing moral defilement.
HOMILETICS
Lev 15:25
twelve years
seems to rise up before us as we read, this verse. Jesus was going on an errand of mercy to heal the daughter of Jairus, and as he went the people thronged him. “And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment” (Mar 5:25-27).
I. THE WOMAN‘S STATE OF CEREMONIAL UNCLEANNESS. For twelve years she had not been allowed within the precincts of the temple, and had been unable, therefore, to take part in the public worship of God as appointed in the books of Moses. And during the whole of the same long period she had been in a state of separation from all about her: whoever touched her became unclean; the bed she lay upon was unclean; the seats that she sat upon were unclean; whoever touched the bed that she lay upon or the seat that she sat upon was unclean. No wonder if for this reason alone “she had spent nil her living upon physicians” (Luk 8:43).
II. HER STATE OF PHYSICAL SUFFERING. She was afflicted with an exhausting disease, wasting her vital powers, and she suffered not only from that cause, but also from the vain attempts made by many physicians to relieve her, as well as from the anxiety of mind inseparable from her state of ceremonial impurity.
III. WHAT SHE SOUGHT. Not to be cleansed as by a priestthis could not be until she had been curedbat to be healed as by a physician. “For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole” (Mar 5:28). The Great Physician accepts her, and fulfils her desire; for however imperfect her faith might be, and. however uninstructed she might herself be, yet there was faith in her sufficient “to make her whole” (Mat 9:22).
IV. HOW THE HEALING WAS WROUGHT. The cure was effected by the power of Christ conveyed through the touch of his garment, on the condition of the woman’s faith. In each of the miracles he uses such means as he thinks fit, and often different means, probably with the purpose in each case of awaking the spirit of the person to be healed so as to become capable of receiving the spiritual gift. As in the case of the lepers on whom he laid his hand, instead of becoming himself unclean, he becomes the channel of renewed life and health to those whom he touches.
V. THE CEREMONIAL CLEANSING STILL TO BE EFFECTED. As the leper, after he had been healed by our Lord, had to “go and show himself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded” (Mat 8:4), so no doubt the woman cured of the issue of blood had to fulfill the legal requirement for her cleansing, by offering her sin offering and her burnt offering on the eighth day after her healing.
VI. SPIRITUAL APPLICATION OF THE MIRACLE. Sin can only be healed by the power of God through Christ brought into spiritual contact with the soul of the sinner, and there must be something of faith and love in the heart of the sinner, however imperfect its manifestation may be, in order that that spiritual contact between God’s Spirit and his spirit may take place,
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Lev 15:1-33
Secret sins.
cf. Psa 19:12; 1Ti 1:13. We have already had occasion to discern as a clear lesson of the old ritual that sin is a nature. The old law did not confine itself to overt acts, but insisted on “sins of ignorance” being regarded as elements of guilt (cf. 1Ti 4:1-16.). Then again we have sin shown to originate in birth (chapter 12); we have its tangible effects strikingly illustrated in the law of the leprosy (chapters 13, 14); and now we have the analysis of sin completed in these laws about issues.
I. IT IS A PHYSICAL FACT THAT MEN AND WOMEN MAY BECOME UNCLEAN WITHOUT ANY ACT OF VOLITION ON THEIR PART. Into the particulars of menstruation and of gonorrhea benigna it is unnecessary to enter. The chapter before us states the fact, and asserts the legal uncleanness which is thereby entailed. If involuntary results entail uncleanness, it is clear that voluntary elements entering in (1Ti 1:18) must increase the sense of uncleanness. Experience confirms the Divine decision. There is a sense of uncleanness which arises as soon as the man or woman becomes conscious of the issue.
II. IT IS EVIDENT FROM THIS THAT SIN HAS A SPHERE OF OPERATION BEYOND CONSCIOUS VOLITION. Just as physically a man or woman contracts uncleanness during the unconsciousness of sleep, so morally we find sinful issues coming forth from the evil heart and nature ere ever we are aware. In strict conformity with this fact, Jonathan Edwards was accustomed to analyze his dreams, believing that, in these involuntary movements of the mind, the moral tendencies of the indwelling spirit may often be detected, and by greater watchfulness subdued. “No mind,” says Dr. Shedd, “that thinks at all upon sin can possibly stop with the outward act. Its own rational reflection hurries it away, almost instantaneously, from the blow of the murdererfrom the momentary gleam of the knifeto the volition within that strung the muscle and nerved the blow. But the mind cannot stop here in its search for the essential reality of sin. When we have reached the spherethe inward sphereof volitions, we have by no means reached the ultimate ground and form of sin. We may suppose that because we have gone beyond the outward actbecause we are now within the manwe have found sin in its last form. But we are mistaken. Closer thinking, and what is still better, a deeper experience, will disclose to us a depth in our souls lower than that in which volitions occur, and a form of sin in that depth, and to the bottom of it, very different from the sin of single volitions. The thinking mind which cannot stop with mere effects, but seeks for first causes, and especially the heart that knows its own plague, cannot stop with that quite superficial action of the will which manifests itself in a volition. The action is too isolatedtoo intermittentand, in reality, too feeble, to account for so steady and uniform a state of character as human sinfulness. For these particular volitions, ending in particular outward actions, the mind instinctively seeks a common ground. For these innumerable volitions, occurring each by itself and separately, the mind instinctively seeks one single indivisible nature from which they spring. When the mind has got back to this point, it stops content, because it has reached a central point.” This most important truth, then, is most powerfully presented by this law regarding issues. We are held responsible for much more than the voluntary element in life.
III. THE FRUITLESSNESS OF THESE OUTCOMES OF NATURE SHOULD ALSO RECEIVE A PASSING NOTICE. The issues spoken of in this chapter are, with one exception, fruitless issues. In no plainer way could the fruitless issues of man’s evil nature be illustrated. If “out of the heart are the issues of life,” out of man’s evil heart of unbelief are issues of fruitlessness and death.
IV. FOR THESE UNCLEANNESSES, INVOLUNTARY AND SECRET, GOD PROVIDED A FITTING ATONEMENT. It is very noticeable that, while the reality of the guilt in these cases is made manifest, it is the smallest sacrifice, two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, which God requires. There is no exaggeration in dealing with the secret sins. Done in ignorance, they are not placed upon the same level with voluntary transgressions. At the same time, they are not winked at.
The sin offering is, of course, a type of Christ, our Atoning Sacrifice. It is on the ground of his atonement that we ask cleansing from secret faults (Psa 19:12) as well as from conscious transgressions. In truth, we are encouraged to come and to acknowledge that sin is a much larger matter than we are conscious of, that, in fact, it goes beyond all our conceptions, but at the same time is within the reach and grasp of our Lord’s atoning power. If he thus sets our secret sins in the light of his countenance, it is that he may have them entirely removed. Saul may have committed his sin: of persecution ignorantly in unbelief, but he needs to obtain mercy on account of them (1Ti 2:13). Superficial views of sin would lead men to imagine that a sin done in ignorance is not a guilty thing. God thinks differently, because he looks into the heart and discerns the deep-seated source.
The burnt offering was to express the renewed sense of consecration which the cleansing brings. Out of defilement the soul passes, by Divine grace, into devotion.
The whole analysis of sin in these chapters (13-15) is profound and philosophical. In fact, portions of Scripture apparently repulsive become replete with wholesome truth when handled humbly and reverently.R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD
Lev 15:1-33
Uncleanness.
Had sin never entered, there had been no disease. Diseases are consequences of sin; their symptoms are therefore taken as emblems of it. So when our Lord miraculously “healed all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease,” he evinced ability to remove all corresponding moral evil. The examples specified in the Law are typical or representative, and are such as have symptoms pronounced and visible.
I. THOSE WHO HAD ISSUES IN THE FLESH WERE UNCLEAN.
1. Out of a pure heart are the issues of life (see Pro 4:23).
(1) The blood, which is the life of the flesh, issuing from the heart, passes along the arteries to the extremities of the body, and carries nourishment to every part.
(2) This is a fine emblem of the heart of the “good treasure,” whose influence upon any corporation, whether domestic, civic, or ecclesiastic, is life-giving (Luk 6:45). But:
2. Out of a foul heart are the issues of death.
(1) If the blood is poisoned at its source, the poison is carried to the extremities, and will break out in ulcers and purulent issues.
(2) As these symptoms declare the boldness of the blood at the heart, which, if not purified, must terminate in mortification and death, so arc they appropriate emblems of moral impurity.
(3) Or if the blood, which is the life, flow away from the body, that also is a fitting emblem of sin which is spiritual death. Therefore the woman who has an issue of blood is accounted unclean, as being in that condition in which the streams of the fountain of life are diverted from their uses of health and nourishment. Those who reject the life-giving efficacy of the gospel are morally dead, and must, if they remain so, rot in their iniquities (see Lam 1:9, Lam 1:17; Eze 36:17).
3. The Law enjoined the separation of the unclean.
(1) They must not come into the tabernacle. They are unfit to stand in God’s presence or to mingle with his people. They must not eat of the holy things. They are in no moral condition to hold fellowship with God and his Church (see Psa 24:4; Mat 5:8).
(2) They have to remove outside the camp, like the leper (see Num 5:2, Num 5:3). There they must remain until they are healed and cleansed.
(3) They transgress these bounds at their peril. They may be stoned to death by the people, or God himself may deal with them (Lev 15:31; Exo 19:12, Exo 19:13). The profane under the gospel have a “much sorer punishment” (see Heb 10:26-31).
II. THEY RENDERED UNCLEAN WHATEVER THEY TOUCHED.
1. This signified the contagion of sin.
(1) Persons were rendered unclean by contact with them (Lev 15:7, Lev 15:19, Lev 15:26). We cannot have fellowship with sin and with God (1Co 5:11; 1Co 15:33; 2Co 6:15-18; Eph 4:29; Jas 4:4).
(2) Things touched by them were also rendered unclean. The bed, the chair, the saddle, etc. (Lev 15:4, Lev 15:12, Lev 15:20). These things may represent men in their properties or attributes, or in their usages, which are all damaged by the influence of sin (1Th 4:4).
(3) Those who touched things rendered unclean by contact, also became unclean (Lev 15:5, Lev 15:6, Lev 15:21-23). What a picture of the spreading power of evil example! How careful should we be to save ourselves from the untoward generation!
2. Ever, when cured they must be cleansed.
(1) Genuine repentance may cure sinful habits, but does not cancel guilt nor purify from sin. The utmost it could do is to prevent accumulations of guilt; the old score remains to be dealt with It does not touch the depravity of the heart (see Mat 23:1-39 : 25).
(2) Time is given to test the cure. Where the disease was rooted, “seven days” of quarantine were required (see Lev 15:13, Lev 15:24, Lev 15:28). The repentance of a moment after a life of evil habits may prove illusive.
(3) Where no disease existed, but uncleanness was contracted by contact, the quarantine was “until the even.” The time here indicated was that of the evening sacrifice, which pointed significantly to the evening of the Jewish day, otherwise called the “end of the world” or age, viz. when Jesus “appeared to put away sin [sacrifices] by the sacrifice of himself,” and remove ritual obligations.
3. Observe the ceremonies of cleansing.
(1) Some who were made clean by contact had to wash their hands (Lev 15:11; comp. Luk 11:38-41). This was when they were passive when the contact was inflicted. But if they neglected to rinse their hands, then they were as though they were active, so they had to wash their flesh and their clothes, and be unclean until the even. No special sacrifices were prescribed. They availed themselves of the daily sacrifice ever on the altar. So in our contact with the moral filth of this world, which is often unavoidable, we have the fountain of the house of David ever flowing, to enable us, almost without an interruption, to walk in the light (see 2Co 7:1; 1Jn 1:7; comp. Joh 13:10).
(2) The person healed of an issue had to bathe his flesh and wash his clothes on the seventh day, when he became “clean.” So far he cleansed himself. The spirit of the Law was fulfilled thus far if he put away all his evil ways (see Isa 1:16; Mat 15:20; Jas 4:8). He was clean so far as repentance could make him so, which was externally only, or before his fellow-men.
(3) He still needed the removal of sin from his soul. He had, therefore, now on the eighth day, to bring his sin offering and burnt offering, that with these the priest should “make an atonement for him before the Lord for his issue” (verses l4, 15, 29, 30). Christ is the Healer and Cleanser (comp. Mat 8:16, Mat 8:17, with Isa 53:4, Isa 53:5).J.A.M.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Lev 15:1-33
Personal purity.
It is not permissible to treat this chapter in any detail; to do so would he to act inconsistently with the very object of the legislation, viz, the encouragement of all delicacy of thought as well as propriety of conduct. But the fact that such a chapter as this (with others like it) is found in Scripture is suggestive and instructive. We gather
I. THAT PERSONAL PURITY WAS AND IS A MATTER OF THE VERY GREATEST CONSEQUENCE IN THE SIGHT OF GOD. Into the relation of the sexes, and into the thoughts, words, and actions which belong to that relation, sin has introduced confusion and degradation. That which should have been the source of nothing but pure and holy joy has become the ground on which the very worst and most debasing consequences of sin are exhibited. Save, perhaps, in some phases of heathen idolatry, there is nothing in which man has shown so grievous a departure from the will of God, and so pitiful a spectacle of uttermost degradation, as in the realm of the sexual relations. It was the design of the Holy One of Israel to train for himself a people which should be free from the flagitious and abominable corruption into which the heathen nations had sunk. But he desired to go further than this: to promote and foster, by careful legislation, not only
(1) morality in its more general sense, but also
(2) decency of behaviour, and even
(3) delicacy of thought.
The Jews were taught and trained to put far away from them everything that was unclean. With this view it was made unlawful not only for those who had knowingly violated moral laws, but for those who had unwittingly offended the laws of ceremonial cleanness, to draw near to their God or to their fellows.
II. THAT SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS THEREON ARE A MATTER OF HOLY EXPEDIENCY. It was needful that the children of Israel should receive particular and precise instructions, for they were to be separated from all surrounding nations in their customs, and so in their characternotably in this matter of purity. Moreover, they were admitted to the near presence of God, and must therefore be clear of all impurity; death would be the penalty of defiling the tabernacle of God (Lev 15:31). Special admonitions and special care are needed:
1. In the case of those who are placed in circumstances of peculiar delicacy.
2. In the case of those who are bound to be above all suspicion of any kind of indelicacy.
3. In the case of the young, who may be led into evil, the magnitude and consequences of which they cannot know. Parental warning, wisely and timely given, may save sons and daughters from much bodily mischief and spiritual suffering.
III. THAT, IN THIS MATTER, WE MUST CONSIDER WHAT IS DUE, NOT ONLY TO OURSELVES, BUT TO OTHERS ALSO. All those details of Divine precept, by which every person and article anywise brought into contact with the unclean man or woman (Lev 15:4-12, Lev 15:20-24, Lev 15:26-27) became unclean, bring out the important truth that impurity is an essentially communicable evil. It is so physically; “let sinners look to it.” It is so spiritually. How guilty in the very last degree are those who drive a nefarious trade in corrupt literature! How shameful to put indecent thought into print to pollute the young! How demoralizing to the soul, how displeasing to God, how scrupulously to be avoided, the questionable conversation that borders on the indelicate and impure (Eph 5:3, Eph 5:4, Eph 5:12; Col 3:8)!C.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Lev 15:1. And the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron, &c. Some other cases respecting both sexes are here mentioned; and, no doubt, with the same view to moral purity, and reverence to the worship of God, as the former. We leave all physical remarks to the physicians.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
FOURTH SECTION
Sexual Impurities and Cleansings
Lev 15:1-33
1And the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean. 3And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue,1 it is his uncleanness. 4Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean. 5And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 6And he that sitteth on any thing whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 7And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 8And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 9And what saddle soever he rideth upon that hath the issue shall be unclean. 10And whosoever toucheth any thing that was under him shall be unclean until the even: and he that beareth any of those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 11And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not rinsed his hands in water,2 he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 12And the vessel of earth, that he toucheth which hath the issue, shall be broken: and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water. 13And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean. 14And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtle doves, or two young pigeons, and come before the Lord unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and give them unto the priest: 15and the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord for his issue.
16And if any mans seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. 17And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.
18The woman also with whom Man 1:3 shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.
19And if a woman have an issue, and4 her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and5 whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. 20And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean. 21And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 22And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 23And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. 24And if any Man 1:3 lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean.
25And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if it run beyond the time of her separation; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she shall be unclean. 26Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her issue shall be unto her as the bed of her separation: and whatsoever she sitteth upon shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her separation. 27And whosoever toucheth those things6 shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 28But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 29And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the [om. the] congregation. 30And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the Lord for the issue of her uncleanness.
31Thus shall ye separate7 the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle [dwelling place8] that is among them.
32This is the law of him that hath an issue, and of him whose seed goeth from him, and is defiled therewith; 33and of her that is sick of her flowers, and of him that hath an issue, of the man and of the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lev 15:3. The Sam. and LXX. here add the clause he is unclean during all the time his issue runneth or is stopped.
Lev 15:11. According to the Syriac, this washing of the hands was to be the act, not of the unclean person himself, but of him whom he touched.
Lev 15:18; Lev 15:24. The Sam. adds the possessive pronoun making this her husband.
Lev 15:19. The Sam and 10 MSS. supply the missing conjunction.
Lev 15:19. The conjunction here is omitted by many MSS., the LXX. and Vulg.
Lev 15:27. 5 MSS. read toucheth her.
Lev 15:31. For =ye shall separate, the Sam., 4 MSS., LXX., and Vulg. read =ye shall warn; but there seems no sufficient reason for the change.
Lev 15:31. properly signifies dwelling-place, and although always rendered tabernacle in Ex. and Lev. in the A. V., needs to be distinguished from the . Comp. note on Lev 8:10.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The whole of Langes Exegetical explanations under this chapter are here given. 1. In his sacrificial law, Moses has throughout translated moral conditions into ritual forms; and he has done this, under the spirit of revelation, truly with wonderful safety, striking precision, and delicacy. Accordingly he here shows the subtle, contagious effects in evil in legal pdagogic images of the sexual impurities, as they incur guilt, or are more or less innocent, in connection with original sin. In so far as our chapter refers back, it forms the climax of the preceding conditions of guilt; but in its reference to the following chapter, it forms the foundation for the idea of a general atonement for the people, still necessary after all the definite single atonements.
2. The law carries with it the consequence that all men are placed, by virtue of their manifold connections and contacts, under the sentence: Ye are uncleanunclean even after all more definite atonements. Haggai has drawn out this thought fully; John the Baptist brought it into application (Hag 2:13 ss., see Com. Matt. p. 68). Hence the great day of atonement must follow all the more special sin offerings, and even this can only suffice for pardonable sins; while the unpardonable sins were sent into the desert upon the he-goat designated for Azazel. The idea of the : Romans 3.
3. The cases of sexual impurity which are detailed here are the following:
Lev 15:1-15. Latent flowing of semen, gonorrha. In this sense it is called a running issue out of his flesh. This uncleanness of the highest degree, as such, is defiling on every side: touching the bed of the unclean person, his seat, his body, his saddle; being smeared with his spittle, touching anything that passes from him;all makes unclean in the first degree for one day, and requires a washing of the clothes, and a bath. The purifying quarantine lasts for eight days. Timidly he must approach the sanctuary with two turtle-doves, or young pigeons, one of which was appointed for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering. This disease not only contaminated, but extended its contaminating power to whatever it touched. In Num 5:2, it is provided that the person so affected should be excluded from the camp. [It does not seem altogether certain that the affection here described was gonorrha, although it is so translated in the LXX., Lev 15:4-6; Lev 15:8-9, etc. That the word flesh is not an euphemism (Knobel) for the organ of generation is evident from Lev 15:7; Lev 15:13; still, that the latter is in view as the seat of the issue, is more than probable from the analogy of the woman in Lev 15:19, But in regard to the character of the issue itself nothing is said. It could hardly have been hemorrhoidal, since there is no mention of blood; it is not likely to have been syphilitic (gonorrha virulenta), notwithstanding the opinion of Michaelis, (laws, art. 212), both because it is more than doubtful if this disease was known in antiquity, and because, if it existed, its presence would betray cause for more severe measures than are here prescribed; it may have been a gonorrha arising from weakness, according to the view of Lange, and as supposed by Jerome and the Rabbins; but it is noticeable that there is no mention whatever made of semen in connection with it, and in Lev 22:4, this is distinguished from a running issue. Or it may have been more probably, simply blennorrha urethr, a discharge of mucus arising from a catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the urethra (urethritis). Keil; so too, Kalisch. In Lev 15:3, a distinction is noticed in the character of the disease which, however, was of no consequence for the purpose in hand; the issue might be continuous, or it might be temporarily retained. In either case the disease was there, and its subject was unclean. Rosenmller would understand flesh in Lev 15:7 to be an euphemism as in Lev 15:2, and the law to cover especially the case of the physician. In Lev 15:11 a provision is made that the person affected might prevent the communication of uncleanness by his touch, by first rinsing his hands in water; thus showing that the uncleanness communicated was of a symbolical character. Lev 15:14-15 provide for a sin offering and burnt offering, of the humblest kind indeed, but yet here, as everywhere in the law, sufficient to keep alive the association between uncleanness and sin. It is declared that the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord for his issue, thus distinctly declaring his uncleanness to have been the ground of an alienation from God, to be removed by a propitiatory sacrifice.F. G.].
Lev 15:16-17. A single emission of seed was treated as a single uncleanness. [It is probable that the law had in view an involuntary act; but it would, nevertheless, apply in all cases, and thus its importance in checking the fearful evil of self-pollution needs no comment.F. G.].
Lev 15:18. So too was the result of a man and woman sleeping together. [This euphemism may possibly be misunderstood. The uncleanness resulted only in case of sexual intercourse, and hence abstinence from such intercourse was a necessary part of preparation for occasions especially requiring cleanness. Exo 19:15; 1Sa 21:5-6, etc. The law must have operated as an important check upon sensual passions. For proof that the same custom was common among other nations, see Knobel. It is always to be remembered, however, that this defilement is connected with the general sinful condition of man, and did not pertain to his original state. See Gen 1:28.F. G.].
Lev 15:19-24. The menstruation was defined as an uncleanness for seven days. [The actual duration is not normally more than four or five days; but the period of a week seems to be fixed, partly to fully cover all ordinary cases, partly on account of the significance of the number seven. Keil. During all this time the woman communicated uncleanness to every person she touched: but especially (Lev 15:24) whoever had sexual intercourse with her (for Keil shows that this must be the meaning) became unclean for the full term of her uncleanness, seven days. In Lev 20:18 it is provided that in case of such intercourse both parties should be cut off from among their people, as having committed an abominable act. The case here provided for must therefore be that of the sudden and unexpected coming on of menstruation, so that the man became unintentionally defiled. But while uncleanness was thus strongly communicated to persons, it only affected among things those on which the woman sat or lay down. She was thus not debarred from the fulfillment of her ordinary domestic duties.
[It has already been noticed under chap. 12 that the provisions of the law in regard to child birth are intentionally separated from the present law in order to mark birth distinctly and emphatically as a subject by itself. The two things may be closely connected naturally; but when there has occurred another beginning of human life, the entrance upon the world of another immortal and accountable being, the event has a gravity and importance which requires its distinct treatment apart from the ordinary, frequently recurring conditions of life.F. G.].
Lev 15:25-30. The woman diseased with a bloody issue was placed under the same regulation as the man with a flow of semen. [Blood seems to be used here (as throughout this chapter) for that which has the general appearance of blood, and is popularly called by that name. Hence what is here referred to is an issue of a menstrual character, either out of its proper time, or prolonged beyond its time. This being abnormal required the same treatment, the same exclusion from the camp (Num 5:2), and the same offering for its atonement as in the case of the man. Ordinary menstruation required no sacrifice.F. G.].
Lev 15:31. The supplement, Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel,etc., shows that these regulations are not merely typical, but also sanitary; that they aim at the duty of sexual purity, both in moral, and in bodily relation. The lying of a than with an unclean woman, Lev 15:33; Lev 15:24, is to be distinguished from the sexual intercourse (Lev 18:19; Lev 20:18). [But see under Lev 15:19-24.F. G.].
That of all the impurities the sexual are rendered so prominent, shows the earnest consecration where with the law places the sexual fountain of the natural life of man under the law of chastity and holiness. So also it abhors exceedingly profanations or defilements of this fountain. On this side the rudeness of heathenism spreads through all the centuries of the Christian era like a dark shadow, while the consecration of the sex life was already announced in the centre of Israel in presage of ideal nuptials. [On the existence of similar ordinances and customs among other nations, see Knobel, Bhr, and the various articles in the Bible Dictionaries.F. G.].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. All the defilements in this and the preceding chapters are here presented o their theocratic, not on their natural side. Nothing is anywhere said in them of means of cure. The attitude of the priest toward them is not that of the physician, aiming at their removal; but rather of the guardian of the sanctuary, first determining their existence, and then when they have been removed, undertaking the purifications by which the polluted person may be restored to his forfeited privilege of approaching God in His sanctuary, and again mingling with the holy people.
II. The object of the laws of purity is manifestly mainly moral. They may also have incidentally a hygienic purpose, but this is entirely subordinate. The main object is the maintenance of the majesty of God. Nothing impure may appear in His presence, and hence all those bodily conditions which are associated with, and suggestive of impurity, are marked as unclean, and not only the persons affected by them are excluded from the sanctuary, or even from the camp, but all contact with them is to be avoided by the holy people.
III. Very much is often said of the extreme frequency of these defilements, as if the Israelites must, under the operation of these laws, have lived in an almost perpetual state of ceremonial uncleanness. But it is to be remembered that we have in these chapters a collection of the cases of uncleanness provided for, which has upon the mind of the reader something of the effect of the perusal of a medical book; finding so many diseases enumerated, he is apt to suppose a state of disease far more common than it really is. Uncleanness, notwithstanding its apparent frequency when the account of all its varieties is collected together, was still an abnormal state, and in the great majority of cases continued only a short time, being limited by the approaching evening at whatever time in the day it may have occurred.
IV. In the Levitical legislation the difference between actual sin and uncleanness which was merely symbolical of sin, is made to appear very clearly. In this chapter particularly, four cases of uncleanness are mentioned, two of which (215, and 2530) were simply diseases, and the other two (1624) entirely natural and sinless; yet not only did the disease make unclean, but also that natural act or condition, which according to the Divine constitution is necessary for the perpetuation of the race in accordance with His own command. In all this there can be nothing sinful in itself; but as mans whole condition is sinful, so are these things constituted unclean, thereby to symbolize, and impress upon the mind of man the character of his whole relation to God who is perfect in holiness.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The laws of this chapter impose many restraints upon the intercourse of the sexes; that was the will of God shown of old by definite educational precepts. It remains His will still, no longer embodied in such precepts, but announced in general principles. See 1Th 4:4.
That the defilements here spoken of were ceremonial and symbolical only, is shown by the fact (Lev 15:12) that the earthen vessel was to be broken, while the wooden one (which is also absorptive) was only to be rinsed with water. Had the defilement been actual, the law must have been the same for both. Theodoret.
The especial object of the laws of uncleanness is declared (Lev 15:31) to be lest they defile my tabernacle. Many things which are natural and right in this our earthly life, are yet unsuitable for the immediate presence of God. Man may, nay, under the Divine constitution of his nature, must do many things which yet are so far apart from the spirituality of the Divine Nature that they evidently need to be widely separated from acts of worship. Yet they are not thereby condemned as sinful, but only there is brought into prominence the infinite distance by which man is separated from God.
Not only cleanness, but cleanliness also, had its meaning, embodied in religious customs, as the 15th chapter shows, in the most striking features under the law. Uncleanness may exist, even with a considerable measure of religious feeling and good-will in the forms of negligence, of false artlessness, and even of a wild geniality. In the delineation of the endlessly fine and subtle contagious power of uncleanness, there comes into view the whole mysterious connection of mankind in sinfulness, as it has been shown by the prophet Haggai (Leviticus 2), and as it lies as the foundation for the baptism of John the Baptist. Thus also this idea of the immeasurable and inscrutable contagion, and of the totality and universality of its guilt, leads to the need and the establishment of the universal and common atonement. It presages an express, great, and single Divine institution. Lange.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev 15:3. The Sam. and LXX. here add the clause he is unclean during all the time his issue runneth or is stopped.
[2]Lev 15:11. According to the Syriac, this washing of the hands was to be the act, not of the unclean person himself, but of him whom he touched.
[3]Lev 15:18; Lev 15:24. The Sam. adds the possessive pronoun making this her husband.
[4]Lev 15:19. The Sam and 10 MSS. supply the missing conjunction.
[5]Lev 15:19. The conjunction here is omitted by many MSS., the LXX. and Vulg.
[6]Lev 15:27. 5 MSS. read toucheth her.
[7]Lev 15:31. For =ye shall separate, the Sam., 4 MSS., LXX., and Vulg. read =ye shall warn; but there seems no sufficient reason for the change.
[8]Lev 15:31. properly signifies dwelling-place, and although always rendered tabernacle in Ex. and Lev. in the A. V., needs to be distinguished from the . Comp. note on Lev 8:10.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The subject of this chapter refers to the laws concerning uncleanness, both as to men and women.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Such are the natural consequences of our fallen state, that everything connected with it is unclean. The very desires of nature are corrupt, and the multiplying of our species is in sin. Psa 51:5 . If we spiritualize this scripture and consider it as emblematical of the state of the soul; the running issues of evil from thence are innumerable. See those scriptures. Isa 1:4-6 ; Hos 4:1-2 ; Mat 15:19-20 . But what a precious relief to the soul, that is conscious of this, is that gracious scripture, in which GOD promiseth to cleanse the soul from all its filthiness. Eze 36:25-27 . And what a happy state is that soul arrived at, in whom those promises have been fulfilled, and who hath an experimental knowledge of that grand truth, 1Jn 1:7 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
VI
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CLEAN AND UNCLEAN
Leviticus 11-15
The scope of Leviticus 11-15.
The minds of commentators, Bible students, and people generally have been very much perplexed to account for this feature of the Levitical law. In other words, that only certain animals must be used for food, and then, uncleanness coming from three other directions, one of which is exceedingly delicate; that, you will have to read about and not have the discussion of it. First, the sexual uncleanness of man or woman; and second, the touching of dead bodies, whether they are clean or unclean; and third, leprosy. And when you have taken those three, you have taken all except what is based on the distinction between the clean and the unclean animals. This applies in two directions, viz.: as to use in sacrifices and more largely as to use in eating. This Levitical distinction between the clean and the unclean and remedies for removing uncleanness have perplexed the minds of more Bible students, perhaps, than any other one thing. And their difficulty is, to account for the principle which determines such legislation, and various opinions have been entertained as to the principle which accounts for this Levitical legislation. I am quite sure that no man could rationally account for the principles that were in the Divine Mind as to these distinctions apart from what the Divine Mind has said. He may attempt philosophically to account for the state which depended only upon the law, but that does not account for the reason or principle underlying it. And there is always a reason for every law. Whether that reason is assigned or not, there is a reason. My own mind is pretty well settled on the subject, though I have tried hard enough to confuse it by reading the literature of various men that have tried to account for it in various ways.
There are certain antecedent facts that are necessary to a settlement of the question, and the first fact is that as God made man before he was a sinner he was a vegetarian. I mean to say that he was permitted to eat only fruits, cereals, and salads and things of that kind. This is the first fact. The second significant fact on the eating question is found in the beginning of Gen 9 . When Noah came out of the ark, this language is used: “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” You see this is an entirely new race commission. The first race commission begins with Adam. Now the race starts anew with an entirely new head. “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth . . .” Now comes the clause, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; as the green herb have I given you all.” Now, the reference there, “as I have given you the green herb,” refers to the first law on the subject, the law of Eden. I quote: “And God said, Behold I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food” (Gen 1:29 ).
Now, that is the original commission about what man must eat, but in this more enlarged commission given to the race through Noah in chapter 9 before there were any Jews, Noah and his family standing for the race, God says, “As I gave you the green herb for food so now I give you every living thing that moveth.” In no discussion that I have ever seen are the facts brought out that I am giving you now. So you see the race is spoken of, Noah being the head of the race; there is no legislation against what you shall eat, either vegetable or animal food, no clean or unclean animals.
Now, the third fact, and I am discussing only the eating now, is that when God gave to Peter the key to the kingdom of heaven that opened the door to the Gentiles, as recorded in Act 10 , he let down a great ark or white sheet from heaven and in that ark were all the animals, whether brutes, that is, beasts, or birds, or creeping things; and he says, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter says “Not so, Lord; I have never been accustomed to eat anything unclean.” And God says, “What I have cleansed call thou not common.” The import of all which is, that whatever legislation was made by Moses with reference to distinction of meats in eating, stops with the Jews; and hence the apostle Paul elaborately argues his liberty to eat anything if it is received with thankfulness. So that it is a fact that in the New Testament the Levitical law as to the distinction between clean and unclean animals is abrogated.
Now, notice the bearing of this fact on the New Testament, i.e., the principle that led to the legislation. When you come to the New Testament times and the kingdom of God is taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, again there is no limitation. These facts force us to look for a reason in the Divine Mind that applied to this people, that is, the Jews as a people in order to get at the distinction. Now I venture to say that you never get beyond the reach of these facts.
The next thing is the distinction between clean and unclean, not as to eating, but as to sacrifice. When did that originate? It did not originate with Noah, as far as sacrifices are concerned, for God commissioned Noah to take into the ark with him one pair of unclean animals and birds and seven pairs of clean animals and birds, as if Noah understood it, and Noah did understand it. And so when Noah came out of the ark he took of the animals and offered sacrifice to God; so this question is forced upon us: Where did the distinction between the clean and unclean animals for sacrifice originate? Not with Adam, not with Noah. Now I will give you the origin. It is equal to a plain statement. It originated as soon as man sinned; when he was expelled from the garden and the symbolical, or typical, method of approach to God was appointed. We know this to be true. In Gen 4 , when one of Adam’s sons brought the clean beast from the flock and God received it, and the other offered simply the produce from his farm, his was rejected; so that I offer to you as the conviction of my mind that the distinction between clean and unclean animals for sacrifice originated when man sinned.
Now, when an issue stands perfectly clear in my own mind, I am on pretty sure ground and my conviction is very clear so far as clean and unclean animals are concerned, that it originated when man sinned, by the appointment of God and would necessarily cease when the Antitype came. So that we find God’s own distinction in animals for sacrifice going back to the sin of man, further back than we carry the distinction of eating. Now, these facts will help us to get at the origin of the distinction between the clean and the unclean in the Divine Mind establishing this regulation. So I point out, first, that the distinction between clean and unclean animals both as to sacrifice and eating was to symbolize certain great spiritual truths and when the symbol was fulfilled, the obligation to continue would then cease. That is principle one. Principle two is for hygienic reasons, sanitary reasons. You know what “hygienic” means. You have studied medicine enough to know that. Sanitary reasons had something to do with it but modern scientists claim that it had everything to do with this distinction between the unclean and the clean animals. Now it is a sad truth that they consider only one principle and that is the sanitary reason, claiming that, as far as eating is concerned, it is the only one worth discussing. I admit the sanitary reason, but I do not give it the prominence that they do, since the commission to Noah did not include it as a race commission. Therefore, the sanitary reason for the whole race does not explain it.
It is wise to use those foods, the use of which is the least dangerous to human health. God knew that this law would last only until the Messiah came and that it applied to the Jews, and that the Jews would simply be around the Mediterranean Sea, in a tropical country, and if I were living in that country now, I wouldn’t eat swine meat, for sanitary reasons. In the tropics it is not best to eat hog meat, and this law proscribes some food that can’t be eaten. Whether in the tropics or out of it, it is not best to eat blood. Statistics have been carefully gathered, that to me are intensely significant. You take the Jews living now in any country of the world, and where they follow the regimen of diet prescribed in the book of Leviticus, these Jews average a longer life than other people, better health than other people and less liable to contagious diseases than other people. Read an account of an epidemic sweeping clear over the country and it is astonishing how very few Jews have it. Now, that fact shows that the food we eat has a great deal to do with the health of the body. Look at those people in the camp life in the wilderness, in the blazing hot country, and for sanitary reasons, these Levitical reasons, they were forbidden to eat certain things. I mention that as the second principle.
Now the third principle. It was the purpose of God to isolate Israel from all the nations of the earth; and in order to isolate Israel) her worship was to be separated from that of other people. .For if they came to the table with the Gentiles, then intermarriage is permitted, and with intermarriage comes the idolatry of the heathen. The history, as you will see when you study Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, shows the introduction of idolatry to come with the association of the Jews with the heathen. A Jewish king with a heathen wife came near blotting religion from the world, and in it all Elijah stood alone with the exception of 7,000 people that had not bowed their knees to Baal. But he thought he was alone in the world and asked God to take him out of the world. So these people must be kept separate from the other people, there must be things that separate them; things that would not permit that degree of intimate association that permits marriage. So these things were given to make a line of demarcation between the Jews and the Gentiles. But when the Jewish policy had served its purpose, then the same God that drew that line tore it down and blotted out the distinction between the clean and the unclean. Those are the three reasons that are satisfactory to my mind, and while I might cite fifty others, advocated by commentators, none of them seems to be of any force but these three. Now note carefully: First, the distinction was made in order to symbolize certain great spiritual truths that would be brought out; second, hygienic or sanitary reasons led to this distinction, and third, this legislation was to isolate Israel and tend to keep it as a separate and particular people.
I come now to another feature of the case, viz.: the touching of dead bodies. If one was defiled, there was a ritual prescribed by which he could become clean ceremonially, before God. It is easy to see in that case the spiritual truth that is embodied in that symbolism. Death is the wages of sin, and the body without the spirit is dead. Now then, in order to make these people realize the necessity of holiness, they must keep apart from the dead. “Let the dead bury their dead.” And if propriety would admit of the discussion of the sexual feature of it, I could make that explanation perfectly satisfactory to you also.
Now we come to the case of leprosy. Why was leprosy and no other form of sickness selected? The commentaries discuss much whether the leprosy of Leviticus is the leprosy of modern times as we understand it. I say to you that it is. I have not time to prove it, but you may just take my assurance that when Leviticus says leprosy it means leprosy in its most loathsome form. Why, now, was leprosy put along beside the bodies of dead men? Simply because one declared to be leprous was as one dead. It was a living death. As it progressed and disfigured the body, it would eat away the nose and the different parts of the body. In other words, -the soul was confined in the charnel house of corruption. He must be segregated, he must hide himself, must not allow other people to come near him. The law commanded him to cover his upper lip, and when he saw any one coming toward him he must cry out, “Unclean, unclean, unclean!” Therefore we find leprosy selected both in the Old and the New Testaments as expressive of sin, and the healing of leprosy as the exercise of the power of God. Medicine cannot cure leprosy when it gets to a certain stage.
A great many things commence like leprosy, and such cases had to be tested, therefore some of these regulations. A man is segregated and the high priest examines him and keeps him segregated until it is known not to be leprosy. Here are the symptoms: First, if the skin turns perfectly white, this is the first step; second, there appear growing out of that spot hairs that are white; that man is pronounced a leper, and then that last fearful sloughing off, eating form comes. Sometimes people would have this white spot and the white hair appearing in this spot and not have leprosy. It was because it did not develop a case in full, but the high priest was to count them lepers until it was shown not to be leprosy. Lepers regarded leprosy as a stroke from God, and indeed that is the etymological meaning of the word. The Hebrew word means a stroke, that is, stroke from God. When the application was made to the king of Israel to heal Naaman, who was a leper, he says, “They seek occasion against me; am I God, that I can make alive?” He meant that it required supernatural power, divine power, to heal a leper. Some of the most noted sermons that have ever been preached have been sermons on leprosy as a type of sin.
Now we come to consider the distinction, not as to the reason of its appointment, but what the distinction itself was between the clean and the unclean, and that is easy to tell. Of the beasts, there must be two things to make it a clean beast, and it did not merely apply to sacrifices. I will show you the limitation directly. No beast could be offered as sacrifice or be eaten as food, unless it possessed two characteristics, viz.: a cloven hoof and the chewing of the cud. Now, the camel’s hoof is not cloven but it chews the cud; the sheep’s hoof is cloven and it does chew the cud; the hog’s hoof is cloven but it does not chew the cud. A number of wild animals are good for food because they divide the hoof and chew the cud, but only domestic animals that divide the hoof and chew the cud could be used as sacrifice. The others were unclean, but any animal, domestic or otherwise, that chewed the cud and divided the hoof could be eaten, for instance, the antelope, the deer, and all other animals of that kind. Now this is the distinction of beasts.
Now we come to the birds and there the distinction is expressed in classes. Certain birds are mentioned, for instance, the dove, the pigeon. They could be used as sacrifice. They had the characteristic generally attributed to them, of innocence. They were not birds of prey. Certain others are specified. All carnivorous birds were excluded, and some birds eat bad flesh, as you know, and that applied to the beasts. There were graminivorous beasts; that means “grass-eating” beasts. They did not have tusks. They had molars, or grinders. The graminivorous beast perhaps would be clean, but none could be clean that was not a grass-eating beast. The eagle, the vulture, the owl, the bat, the stork, the heron, and the crane are mentioned by name as not clean. The goose, the duck, the chicken, and all the variety of quail could be eaten, but only certain ones could be used as sacrifice.
Now we come to another class, and here is what the Hebrew, literally translated, says about a certain class of things that were clean: First, he must be winged, and second, he must have four legs beside the hind legs used for hopping and jumping; as locusts, crickets, etc. Many people eat them. John the Baptist was a “bug-eater,” and in some countries the locust is a general article of food. Now think of that, fellow. First) he must be able to fly; he must be able to walk on all fours; he must have wings to fly, and his hind legs must be hopping legs. There is, of course, in this country, a great deal of prejudice against eating grasshoppers, but I am sure that if you were over in those countries and did not know what they were, you would eat them. They are dried in the sun and then ground up into flour and baked into a kind of cake. So you would not know what it was. I confess I don’t want any myself.
Now, have you got that perfectly clear? The animal in order to be eaten, must divide the hoof and chew the cud, and in order to be used as a sacrifice, must not only do that but it must be domestic; as, the cow, the sheep, the goat. The birds are specified by classes and must not be carnivorous birds. The grasshopper class must have four legs, two hoppers, and be able to fly. Now, there is one more class and that is the fishes. Two characteristics the fish must have in order to be Levitically fit to eat. It must have fins and it must have scales fins and scales both. The catfish wouldn’t do. It has no scales; but there are others that would not do; as, the oyster. There people didn’t eat many oysters and we leave them out in the hot months. Now suppose it was hot all the time, as it is there; we would eat very few oysters. The rule will not apply to fishes as to birds. The fishes that have fins and scales are carnivorous; for instance, take a big trout. He eats the smaller fish and is carnivorous and voracious. There are four distinctions in fact, and I have discussed the principles.
Now the method of removing uncleanness, and the details are elaborate. I recommend again the volume on Leviticus in the Expositors Bible, as one of the best expositions of the book I ever read, by Kellogg. He is not poisoned by higher criticism, as most of these books are. When I go over a book, I am sure to tell you what books to use. The Expositor’s and the Cambridge Bibles are widely used; while some parts of them you cannot rely on, you can rely on the Leviticus volume of the Expositor’s Bible.
Dr. Wilkinson, of Chicago, came down to Texas to deliver a series of lectures. One of his subjects was “The Book of Leviticus” and all his lectures were on the introduction to the book. He came to me and said, “What have you on Leviticus that is any account?” I said, “Take Kellogg, of the Expositor’s Bible.” He says, “It is in mighty bad company.” But when he brought the book back, he said, “I thank you that you called my attention to that book. I had such a dislike for the Expositor’s Bible that I never thought to look in there for anything good, but it is superb.”
Now, I will tell you of another that will bring out the spiritual, and that is Mackintosh. He is spiritual, though a premillennialist. They do stand foursquare for the truth and I have always loved that kind of a man. If they stand square and do not yield to the higher critics; if they are spiritually minded and their teaching is spiritual, I am going to take them close to my heart and convert them as fast as I can. There are some mighty good people among them. Moody was one. A. C. Dixon, W. B. Riley, and others are among them and they are mighty good people.
Our next lesson is on Lev 17 and we take up the law of holiness in that. That refers to eating, which has been discussed in this study, but solely with reference to the distinction of meats. That law of holiness governs eating in other respects, viz.: the purity of life, the purity in the marriage relation all that comes under the head of this law. The most interesting part of Leviticus after we pass chapter 16 is the times, the set times in which Israel is to appear before God. It follows out this idea viz.: that Leviticus is the developments of that part of the law which is the altar and shows the way of approach to God, through what one shall approach God, through whom he shall approach God, and then gives the inauguration of the service after it has been established, the culmination of that service in regard to the clean and the unclean animals, and the times to come before God, i.e., the set times: First, the evening and the morning; second, the weekly sabbaths; third, the monthly, or lunar sabbaths; fourth, the great annual sabbaths; fifth, the landsabbath, or the seventh-year sabbath; and sixth, the Jubilee sabbath, the seven times seven, or fiftieth-year sabbath, the Jubilee.
QUESTIONS
1. What puzzling question relative to the distinction between, the clean and the unclean in eating and in sacrifice?
2. What is the real difficulty with Bible students on this question?
3. What three divisions of uncleanness as relating to persons?
4. Who two classes, or divisions, as relating to animals?
5. How, then, account for these principles?
6. What antecedent facts necessary to a settlement of this question as it relates to eating?
7. What is the import of the revelation to Peter in. Act 10 ?
8. What, then, does Paul say on this question?
9. What bearing has this principle on New Testament revelation?
10. What do these facts force us to look for?
11. When did the distinction between the clean and unclean animals for sacrifice originate?
12. Then, when would this distinction between the clean and unclean animals for sacrifice necessarily cease?
13. According to these facts, what is principle number one as to the distinction between clean and unclean animals relating to both sacrifice and eating?
14. What, then, is principle number two?
15. What is the contention of modern scientists on this and your reply?
16. How did this principle apply to the Jews?
17. What evidence of its influence on the Jewish life?
18. What is principle number three?
19. What three things were essential to accomplish the isolation of Israel?
20. When were these distinctions blotted out?
21. Why did the touching of a dead body render one unclean?
22. Why was leprosy and no other form of sickness selected?
23. Why was leprosy selected in both Testaments as expressive of sin?
24. What are the symptoms of leprosy?
25. How did lepers regard leprosy and why?
26. What distinction between clean and unclean beasts as to eating?
27. What distinction as to sacrifice?
28. What distinction as to birds?
29. What is said of the grasshopper class?
30. What distinguishes the clean from the unclean in fishes?
Leviticus Chapter 15
CHAPTER 34.
FLUX IN MEN AND ITS DEFILEMENT.
Lev 15:1-12 .
In 2Th 1:8 , when the Lord appears in vengeance on guilty living men, the Gentiles are distinguished as those that know not God, the Jews as those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. It was the privilege of Jews to have God in the world entering into every need and difficulty, every responsibility and danger, as the Gentiles had not. They had even the visible sign of His glory in the tabernacle till their apostasy. Hence they had Him enjoining what was due to His presence in their midst, although in a way altogether inferior to that enjoyed by the Christian and in the church.
But earthly and temporal as it was, it accounts for such requirements as we read here and elsewhere. We have had its application to human birth (in Lev 12 ) and (in Lev 13 ) to sin in the life, as a deadly and defiling thing, a living death, which necessitated exclusion from tent, camp, and worship, and (in Lev 14 ) the striking means required for cleansing him when cured without telling us how cure could be. Here we have other and lesser sources of defilement on which we may say a little. They indicate the sad and shameful effects of sin.
The principle is a great one. All is judged, even for fallen man, according to His presence who deigned to dwell there. A human standard, if indeed any pretended to have it, was well enough for a heathen. An Israelite was to submit to the God of Israel regulating the entire life, public and private, of His earthly people. Impossible, if Jehovah were their God and they His people, to evade those terms. Piety would welcome them with heart and soul.
So it will be finally under Messiah and the new covenant when He will write His law in their heart; and they shall know Him from the least to the greatest, for He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. Alas! they, ignorant of their sin, had at Sinai forgotten to plead His promise, end even taken their stand on their own obedience; so that ruin soon befell them, and all went on worse and worse, till there was “no remedy” on that footing. Then came the rejection of their only hope. A brighter day awaits them when their heart turns to the Lord (2Co 3 ), and He will save them with a divine salvation.
” 1 and Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2 Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, If any man hath a flux from his flesh because of his flux, he [is] unclean. 3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his flux: whether his flesh run with his flux, or his flesh be closed from his flux, it [is] his uncleanness. 4 Every bed whereon he that hath the flux lieth shall be unclean; and everything whereon he sitteth shall be unclean. 5 And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 6 And he that sitteth on [anything] whereon he that hath the flux sat shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the flux shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 8 And if he that hath the flux spit upon him that is clean, then he shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 9 And what carriage (or saddle) soever he that hath the flux rideth upon shall be unclean. 10 And whosoever toucheth anything that was under him shall be unclean until the even; and he that beareth those things shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 11 And whomsoever he that hath the flux toucheth without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his raiment, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. 12 And the earthen vessel that he that hath the flux toucheth shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water ” (vers. 1-12).
Man is not as God created him; he is fallen: and here we read how God instructed the Israelite of old to judge his state. It was not nature, but nature ruined and unclean; so are its unclean emotions. They are tainted and defile. So Jehovah spoke to Moses and Aaron. The physical uncleanness speaks to us of a deeper evil. So the Lord taught even the multitude: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth the man ” (Mat 15:11 ). And when Peter, feeling Pharisaic opposition, asked more, the Lord replied, “Do not ye understand that all that entereth into the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into a sewer? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth out from the heart; and those things defile the man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, theft, false witnessing, blasphemies: these are the things which defile the man.” The outside satisfies those who have not faith and count God as themselves. For as the Lord pointed out, Every plant which My heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind leaders of blind; but if blind lead blind, both will fall into a ditch.
But a holy God will have us take account of the humiliating truth, if the uncleanness flow out, or even if suppressed within by night or by day (3, 4) as to things or persons (5-12). Every case demanded purifying. To the Jew it was water; to us the washing of water by the word, the water that flowed from Christ in death, to which the apostle who saw bears record in Gospel and Epistle.
Our word of confession is due to God; but Christ’s word has virtue in it through the Spirit and His own advocacy. Thus is communion maintained. To be born again and forgiven is not enough. We are brought into divine fellowship, and all that is unsuitable in us God will-have us to judge. It would be hard if He had not provided all that sustains or restores. It is careless or unholy, now that He is at all the charge for our blessing, if we avail not ourselves of it conscientiously. Vigilance as well as dependence on Him and the heart’s submission to His word with confidence of His love in Christ are ever needed. Weak, exposed with such a nature, and a subtle foe to take advantage, we are only kept by God’s power through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
But the way is ordained of God as surely as the end is made secure. It is not enough to put to death our members that are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil lust, and the covetousness (or, unbridledness) which is idolatry; on account of which things cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience, among whom we also once walked when we lived in these things. But now, as it is added, put off, ye too, all the things, wrath, fury, malice, blasphemy, shameful language, out of your mouth, no less than deceit. Lie not unto each other, as having put off the old man with his deeds, and having put on the new, that is being renewed unto true knowledge according to His image that created him; wherein can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free, but the all and in all [is] Christ.
The principle is as simple as it is sure. As He that called us is holy, so are we also to be in every manner of life, because it is written, Be ye holy, for that I am holy. Grace has brought us into our new and near relationship to God, and has even given us His nature in the life we have in Christ. We come therefore under His fatherly dealing henceforth, Who without respect of persons judges according to the work of each.
CHAPTER 35.
THE ATONEMENT FOR FLUX.
Lev 15:13-15 .
It is of great importance and instruction to see how Israel were taught to regard these loathsome experiences according to their relationship with Jehovah. Other nation. were occupied with second causes. They were taught that, as God had to do with them in these marks of humiliation, so had they to do with Him. And He condescended to signify His sense of their defiled condition by entering into every little detail of their movements by day and of rest by night, so as to impress them with what sin had brought on the guilty. Their wisdom was to heed these lessons, if strangers to Him despised His word and them also for submission to it.
When the day of Jehovah comes, how will they not rejoice in what grace will give them! Israel will then sing, “Bless Jehovah, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits; Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who heareth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” As His earthly people they will enjoy the reversal of their old uncleanness, and infirmities, along with soul blessing and external power. As heavenly, the Christian is called to suffer now, yet knowing himself one spirit with the Lord, and awaiting His coming to be with Him in the mansions of the Father’s house, as well as to share His exaltation over all things. The contrast is great: God has provided concerning us some better thing, not only than Israel’s millennial place, but even than the elders who receive the promise in that day, though they will be perfected together in the bright day of blessing on all sides.
” 13 And when he that hath a flux is cleansed of his flux, then he shall count seven days for his cleansing, and wash his raiment, and bathe his flesh in living water, and he shall be clean. 14 And on the eighth day he shall take two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and come before Jehovah unto the entrance of the tent of meeting, and give them unto the priest. 15 And the priest shall offer them, one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah for his flux ” (vers. 13-15).
Still more distinctly does the recognition of Jehovah rise when the flux ceased. A complete term ensued for his cleansing. His clothes were washed, and his flesh bathed in running water. Thus only did he become truly clean. Then on the eighth day he took an offering, expressly in other cases adapted to the poor in Israel, but here for all alike, when any were to be cleared from this defilement. He took to him two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and came before Jehovah unto the entrance of the tent of meeting, and gave them to the priest. And the priest was directed to offer them, small as they were with all due reverence, the one as a Sin-offering, and the other as a Burnt-offering. Nor was the offerer to doubt of the issue: the priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah for his flux. It was due to Jehovah, and it was available for the cleansing of the flesh meanwhile: the shadow of that unfailing and everlasting atonement which the Lord Jesus alone could effect. For Him faith had to wait. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, come of woman, come under law, to redeem those that were under law, that we [Jews who believe] might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye [Galatian or other Gentile believers] are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts [that is, of both], crying Abba, Father.
How fitting that the day of resurrection should be the epoch of deliverance! Thenceforward the defilement was a thing of the past. If we need to feel the days of shame over uncleanness, God would have him who rests on Christ both for his own sin and for Christ’s acceptance to enter into the joyful assurance that all is clear. But on the face of the ordinance while we have what typifies the washing of water by the word, which only the Holy Spirit makes effectual by recalling Christ to us, nothing avails without the one great sacrifice. And this is both to efface the evil and to impart full acceptance in all the worth of Christ. What grace is in God to turn what is so humiliating into a deepening sense of what His work secures to faith!
CHAPTER 36.
OTHER IMPURITIES.
Lev 15:16-33 .
There remains a still larger portion of these uncleannesses which divine wisdom did not scruple to notice, however humbling to men and women; for as we have had the one sex, so now follows the other. Jehovah would compel His people to feel that He takes account, not merely of sin as typified in its most destructive shape as well as in the very ushering into the world of a child, male or female, but of such impurities as are of a more ordinary nature and frequent recurrence, proceeding from men and women as they are, and connected with that which is lawful and necessary. If the latter was for the earthly people, Christians are entitled to read these outward ordinances in the spirit. To the pure all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
” 16 And if any man’s seed of copulation pass from him, then he shall bathe his whole flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. 17 And all raiment and every skin, wherein the seed of copulation shall be, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. 18 And a woman with whom a man lieth with seed of copulation, they shall bathe in water, and be unclean until the even.
19 And if a woman hath a flux, and her flux in her flesh be blood, she shall be seven days in her separation, and whoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. 20 And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean; and every thing that she sitteth upon shall be unclean. 21 And whoever toucheth her bed shall wash his raiment, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 22 And whoever toucheth any thing that she sitteth upon shall wash his raiment, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even. 23 And if it be on the bed or on any thing on which she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. 24 And if a man lie with her at all, and the uncleanness of her separation come upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean. 25 And if a woman have her flux of blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if she have the flux beyond the time of her separation, all the days of the flux of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she is unclean. 26 Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her flux shall be to her as the bed of her separation; and every thing on which she sitteth shall be unclean, according to the uncleanness of her separation. 27 And whoever toucheth these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his raiment, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even.
28 And if she be cleansed of her flux, then she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 29 And on the eighth day she shall take to her two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tent of meeting. 30 And the priest shall offer the one as a sin-offering and the other as a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before Jehovah for the flux of her uncleanness.
31 Ye shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in their midst.
32 This is the law of him that hath a flux, and of him whose seed of copulation goeth from him, whereby he is defiled; 33 and of her who is sick in separation, and of him that hath a flux; of the man and of the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean ” (vers. 16-33).
Through law is knowledge, right knowledge, of sin (Rom 3:20 ), though Christ and the cross gave us it, as all else, still more and perfectly. And this was intended for Israel’s good. No other people had God taking pains to show them where the race is through sin. No doubt it was a burdensome yoke: how could it be otherwise till a Saviour was given to save from sins? Those who confided in God, feeling their utter defilement, voluntary and involuntary, looked according to His word for Him who should come, defeat at all cost the enemy, atone for sin before God, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Those meanwhile were objects of His mercy and gracious care. Such as felt only the present and saw no more than their uncleannesses, with sacrifices through the priest, rose not above the purifying of the flesh.
But the profit abides for those who through faith read Christ in what without Him are but ordinances of flesh (Heb 9:9 , Heb 9:10 ). They can pity and deplore the unbelief which is shocked that a divine revelation should lay bare Jehovah’s notice of the vile and offensive workings of our fallen nature. But here was at least a testimony, though by no means a complete and final one, to man’s innate evil. Israel stood in a relationship to Jehovah which required the serious acknowledgment of the sad facts, but with a provision of His direction which cleansed them for the then present time, till grace and truth came in perfection.
How infinite His love and work who bore our sins in His body on the tree! His death has for faith completely effaced the evil and cleared the conscience; and His resurrection has given us a new life and place into which evil cannot come, which the Holy Ghost strengthens as we lean on Christ to walk as He walked, judging as flesh (to which we died with Him) every working of the old nature.
LONDON:
F. E. RACE, 3 & 4, LONDON HOUSE YARD,
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E C.
1902.
spake. See note on Lev 5:14.
Chapter 15
Now as we get into the fifteenth chapter God deals with sort of a boil kind of a thing or any breaking out on your body, any kind of a running sore that a person might have. That he is unclean and the whole thing has now to do with hygienic principles. How that anything that he wears that touches it is unclean. And the various washing processes that they need to go through until this running sore, sort of a staff infection, is healed completely. It is interesting that these laws of cleanliness, these laws of washing were so important for good hygiene.
Up until the last one hundred years or so, the hospitals did not always follow good practices of hygiene. The doctors didn’t really wash that much. In fact, there used to be sort of a feeling that the bloodier that the doctor’s clothes were, really, it was sort of a symbol of the efficiency and the effectiveness of the man. And so they would go from one patient to another without washing, from one childbirth delivery to another without washing, and from one operation to another without washing. Coming in all bloodied and everything and just moving from one to another and not really following a good routine of washing.
Now one of the first doctors to recommend that they really start a thorough washing procedure almost lost his license because he dared to suggest such a thing. And he was really looked down on in the medical field for quite some time until he was able to prove statistically that the death rate among his patients, especially those mothers bearing children, was much less than all of the rest by a dramatic amount because of the careful practices of washing. So now this is up until just about a hundred years ago. There wasn’t nearly the care in washing; and yet, had they read the law that God gave, they would have known the necessity and the value of the washing and of the cleaning.
Now the Bible doesn’t say that cleanliness is next to Godliness in those words. Those words are found in the Koran, but not in the Bible. But yet surely it is implied that cleanliness is important. Physical cleanliness is important. That is certainly something that is taught in the law. Though it is not necessarily related to Godliness, because they are whole different areas. But yet just to your own physical well being, cleanliness is very important to stop the spread of disease and for just good health. Cleanliness is important indeed.
And so as you get into the fifteenth chapter, and you’re dealing with these issues and so forth that are coming forth sort of a staff infection. He goes through the various cleansing processes and the way that they are to be cleansed. The number of days and so forth and then also just dealing with basically with cleanliness.
And then coming to the woman and dealing with her in her menstrual periods and the fact that during this period she was ceremonially unclean. That anyone that touched the bed where she slept was also unclean, would have to wash and so forth. And then after the menstrual period would have to wait for seven days in separation and then she would bring on the eighth day two young pigeons or turtle doves to the priest for sacrifices of a sin offering and a burnt offering and then she was then clean and could then resume physical relations with her husband once more. It is interesting, this is no doubt there was such great fertility among these people. Because that is when they were able to come again with physical relationships was about the time of ovulation, and so it made for a rapid increase in population.
And thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, and when they defile my tabernacle that is among them ( Lev 15:31 ).
Now the uncleanness, it is important that we realize that this was a ceremonial uncleanness and during the period of this uncleanness, they were not allowed to come to the tabernacle of God. If you had this running sore, you were not allowed to come to the tabernacle of God until you had gone through the seven days of washing. Washing your clothes, washing your body and everything else, and after the running sores had healed, had scabbed over and healed, and then you could come. But it was ceremonially unclean. You weren’t allowed in the tabernacle of God during this period of uncleanness. “
Chapter fifteen is a strange and solemn one in many ways, dealing as it does with the law of uncleanness as it applies to the question of issues. As in the case of the laws concerning childbirth, here the mind is once more brought face to face with dread and forceful solemnity to the fact of the defilement of the race.
A careful perusal of these requirements reminds us that the procreative faculties are all underneath the curse as the result of race pollution. Whether the exercise of such faculties be natural or unnatural, in the sight of a God of absolute holiness they are tainted with sin. Therefore, for the people of God, most stringent laws were made for cleansing.
This section has a solemn message to all of us concerning the fact of the pollution of our nature at its very fountainhead and the consequently perpetual necessity for cleansing. Such views may not be popular in our own day and generation, but experience perpetually teaches that to forget them or to neglect their solemn warning issues in disastrous results and a paralysis of the possibility of communion with God.
5. Concerning Issues: Mans Weakness and Defilement
CHAPTER 15
1. The uncleanness of a man (Lev 15:1-18)
2. The uncleanness of a woman (Lev 15:19-33)
The whole chapter shows the deplorable physical condition into which man has been plunged by sin. The issues mentioned were therefore an evidence of the presence of sin in mans nature with the curse upon it, and constitutes man and woman unclean in the sight of God. Not only actions, from which we can abstain, but operations of nature which we cannot help, alike defile; defile in such a manner and degree as to require, even as voluntary acts of sin, the cleansing of water and the expiatory blood of a sin offering. One could not avoid many of the defilements mentioned in this chapter, but that made no difference; he was unclean. Fallen human nature in its weakness and defilement is taught, and that this human nature is impure and polluting even in its secret workings. The blood and the water cover all this. It must be noticed that the water and the different application of water is constantly mentioned throughout this chapter. The water always typifies the Word by which our way is to be cleansed.
Again, we learn that human nature is the ever-flowing fountain of uncleanness. It is hopelessly defiled; and not only defiled, but defiling. Awake or asleep, sitting, standing, or lying, nature is defiled and defiling: its very touch conveys pollution. This is a deeply humbling lesson for proud humanity; but thus it is. The book of Leviticus holds up a faithful mirror to nature: it leaves flesh nothing to glory in. Men may boast of their refinement, their moral sense, their dignity: let them study the third book of Moses, and there they will see what it is all really worth in Gods estimation (C.H. Mackintosh).
The case of the woman with an issue of blood (Mat 9:18-26) is stated in verses 25-27. How great must have been her trial and her sorrow during the twelve years of her uncleanness. Still greater was her faith and the testimony she bore to the holy Person of our Lord. All what came in touch with such an unclean person became unclean. She believed both that her touch could not make Christ unclean, for He is holy, and that His power could heal her.
Aaron: Lev 11:1, Lev 13:1, Psa 25:14, Amo 3:7, Heb 1:1
Reciprocal: Lev 5:3 – the uncleanness Lev 7:21 – the uncleanness Lev 15:32 – General
Lev 15:1. The laws in this chapter, although, in the main, aiming at the same end with the foregoing cases, namely, to teach the necessity of moral purity, and preserve the reverence due to the worship of God, yet were also particularly intended as a restraint upon immoderate indulgences of the flesh.
Lev 15:2. Running issue. The holy scriptures speak modestly of obscene things. It is a kind of gonorrhea, occasioned by whoredom, or by lascivious habits.How strikingly is the providence of God displayed in deterring the wicked from profligacy, by this most dreadful disease of rottenness in the bones: and if he so afflict the body, what punishment is that which awaits the soul.
Lev 15:16-18. This accident happening to a man in a dream, whether sleeping alone or with his wife, rendered him totally unclean, because occurrences of this kind seldom happen to one whose heart is habitually right with God.
Lev 15:24. If a man lie with her at all, either by coition or otherwise, he shall be unclean seven days. If it were a gross case, so as to bring him before the magistrates, he was to be utterly cut off from the congregation. See on Exo 12:15. Lev 20:18. The wisdom and equity of this law is founded on the purity of the divine nature, which abhors the offensive uncleanness of mankind. Also on the guard to which it prompts us, for though the beasts are but slightly affected with menses, they shun from instinct this impurity. It is besides injurious to health, conveying to the progeny those hereditary diseases which the infirmity alluded to is designed to carry off.
Lev 15:27. Whosoever touchethshall be unclean. The ritual law was indeed a yoke which the Jews could not bear. What a cloud of persons and of things made a man unclean! The rabbins in many instances restricted the prohibitory touch to holy vessels; yet the burden was but slightly relieved. In Jerusalem, the population being dense, only a small proportion of the people could legally be accounted clean.
Lev 15:31. Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel. The Samaritan and Septuagint copies read, Thus shall you make the children of Israel cautious concerning their uncleanness, that they die not.
REFLECTIONS.
How dreadful is the state of the corrupt and guilty world! How bitter and impure the streams of original sin, when modesty is lost, and religion insulted. The Lord afflicts the body with disease, the conscience with terror, and enlarges the jaws of hell to receive its prey. It was death for man or woman, so polluted, to enter the congregation of the Lord. Their eyes and looks are full of sin, and all around them is impure. Unless the body of a sinful leper was healed, he could never more enter the congregation of the Lord. The gospel is not less rigorous than the law; for whoremongers and adulterers God will judge, and they shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
At the sixteenth verse, all men, and youth in particular, have instruction. No plea arising from passion or dream is allowed, for God has made no man under a necessity of sinning. The laws of temperance will preserve the body in purity, and religion will sanctify the soul. Young men, says the blessed Polycarp, keep your flesh as the temple of God. War a good warfare, keep the heart with all diligence, and God will keep you from falling. Having first given your affections, next present your bodies to him a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. Endeavour to live in childlike innocence, in purity of thought, and the God of purity will make you his habitation for ever.
Let us then be stimulated to all holiness of body and mind, by a sight of the awful situation of the wicked. See the licentious youth of our age, early initiated into vice, with a sallow, pallid countenance, feeble in their walk, emaciated in their frame, and gloomy in their looks. Almost every disease incident to the human body is superinduced. They are old and worn-out men in the flower of their age; a terror to themselves, and an affliction to their friends. Oh what we owe to divine wisdom! Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand are riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
Leviticus 15
This chapter treats of a variety of ceremonial uncleannesses of a much less serious nature than leprosy. This latter would seem to be presented as the expression of the deep-seated energy of nature’s evil; whereas, chap. 15 details a number of things which are merely unavoidable infirmities, but which, as being, in any measure the outflow of nature, were defiling, and needed the provisions of divine grace. The divine presence in the assembly demanded a high order of holiness and moral purity. Every movement of nature had to be counteracted. Even things which, so far as man was concerned, might seem to be unavoidable weaknesses, had a defiling influence, and required cleaning, because Jehovah was in the camp. Nothing offensive, nothing unsightly, nothing in any way uncomely, should be suffered within the pure, unsullied and sacred precincts of the presence of the God of Israel. The uncircumcised nations around would have understood nothing of such holy ordinances; but Jehovah would have Israel holy, because He was Israel’s God. If they were to be privileged and distinguished by having the presence of a holy God, they would need to be a holy people.
Nothing can be more calculated to elicit the soul’s admiration than the jealous care of Jehovah over all the habits and practices of His people. At home and abroad, asleep and awake, by day and by night, He guarded them. He attended to their food, He attended to their clothing, He attended to their most minute and private concerns. If some trifling spot appeared upon the person, it had to be instantly and carefully looked into. In a word, nothing was overlooked which could, in any wise, affect the well-being or purity of those with whom Jehovah had associated Himself, and in whose midst He dwelt. He took an interest in their most trivial affairs. He carefully attended to everything connected with them, whether publicly, socially, or privately.
This, to an uncircumcised person, would have proved an intolerable burden. For such an one to have a God of infinite holiness about his path, by day, and about his bed, by night, would have involved an amount of restraint beyond all power of endurance; but to a true lover of holiness, a lover of God, nothing; could be more delightful. Such an one rejoices in the sweet assurance that God is always near; and he delights in the holiness which is, at once, demanded and secured by the presence of God.
Reader, say, is it thus with you? Do you love the divine presence and the holiness which that presence demands? are you indulging in anything incompatible with the holiness of God’s presence? Are your habits of thought, feeling, and action, such as comport with the purity and elevation of the sanctuary? remember, when you read this fifteenth chapter of Leviticus, that it was written for your learning. You are to read it in the Spirit, for to you it has a spiritual application. To read it in any other way is to wrest it to your own destruction, or, to use a ceremonial phrase, “to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
Do you ask, “what am I to learn from such a section of Scripture? What is its application to me?’ In the first place, let me ask, do you not admit that it was written for your learning? This, I imagine, you will not question, seeing the inspired apostle so expressly declare that, “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning.” (Rom.15: 4) Many seem to forget this important statement, at least, in so far as the book of Leviticus is concerned. They cannot conceive it possible, that they are to learn ought from the rites and ceremonies of a by-gone age, and particularly from such rites and ceremonies as the fifteenth of Leviticus records. But, when we remember, that God the Holy Ghost has written this very chapter – that every paragraph, every verse, every line of it “is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable,” it should lead us to inquire what it means. Surely, what God has written His child should read. No doubt, there is need of spiritual power to know how, and spiritual wisdom to know when, to read such a chapter; but the same holds good with respect to any chapter. One thing is certain, if we were sufficiently spiritual, sufficiently heavenly, sufficiently abstracted from nature, and elevated above earth, we should deduce nought but purely spiritual principles and ideas from this and kindred chapters. If an angel from heaven were to read such sections, how should he regard them? Only in a spiritual and heavenly light; only as the depositories of the purest and highest morality. And why should not we do the same? I believe we are not aware of what positive contempt we pour upon the sacred Volume by suffering any portion of it to be so grossly neglected as the book of Leviticus has been. If this book ought not to be read, surely it ought not to have been written. If it be not “profitable,” surely it ought not to have had a place assigned it in the canon of divine inspiration; but, inasmuch as it hath pleased “the only wise God” to write this book, it surely ought to please His children to read it.
No doubt, spiritual wisdom, holy discernment, and that refined moral sense, which only communion with God can impart – all these things would be needed in order to form a judgement as to when such scripture ought to be read. We should feel strongly disposed to question the sound judgement and refined taste of a man, who could stand up and read the fifteenth of Leviticus, in the midst of an ordinary congregation. But why? Is it because it is not “divinely inspired,” and, as such, “profitable?” By no means; but because the generality of persons are not sufficiently spiritual to enter into its pure and holy lessons.
What, then, are we to learn from the chapter before us? In the first place, we learn to watch, with holy jealousy, everything that emanates from nature. Every movement of, and every emanation from, nature is defiling. Fallen human nature is an impure fountain, and all its streams are polluting. It cannot send forth ought that is pure, holy, or good. This is a lesson frequently inculcated in the Book of Leviticus, and it is impressively taught in this chapter.
But, blessed be the grace that has made such ample provision for nature’s defilement! This provision is presented under two distinct forms, throughout the entire of the book of God, and throughout this section of it in particular – namely, “water and blood.” Both these are founded upon the death of Christ. The blood that expiates and the water that cleanses flowed from the pierced side of a crucified Christ. (Comp. John 19: 34, with 1 John 5: 6) “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1: 7) And the word of God cleanseth our practical habits and ways. (Ps.119: 9; Eph.5: 26) Thus, we are maintained in fitness for communion and worship, though passing through a scene where all is defiling, and carrying with us a nature, every movement of which leaves a soil behind.
It has been already remarked that our chapter treats of a class of ceremonial defilement’s less serious than leprosy. This will account for the fact that atonement is here foreshadowed, not by a bullock or a lamb, but by the lowest order of sacrifice – namely, “two turtle doves.” But, on the other hand, the cleansing virtue of the Word is continually introduced, in the ceremonial actions of “washing,” “bathing,” and “rinsing.” “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Water held a most important place in the Levitical system of purification, and, as a type of the Word, nothing can be more interesting or instructive.
Thus we can gather up the most valuable points from this fifteenth chapter of Leviticus. We learn, in a very striking manner, the intense holiness of the divine presence. Not a soil, not a stain, not a speck can be tolerated, for a moment, in that thrice-hallowed region. “Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.” (Ver. 31.)
Again, we learn that human nature is the overflowing fountain of uncleanness. It is hopelessly defiled; and not only defiled, but defiling. Awake or asleep, sitting, standing, or lying, nature is defiled and defiling. Its very touch conveys pollution. This is a deeply-humbling lesson for proud humanity; but thus it is. The Book of Leviticus holds up a, faithful mirror to nature. It leaves “flesh” nothing to glory in. Men may boast of their refinement, their moral sense, their dignity. Let them study the third book of Moses, and there they will see what it is all really worth, in God’s estimation.
Finally, we learn, afresh, the expiatory value of the blood of Christ, and the cleansing, purifying, sanctifying virtues of the precious word of God. When we think of the unsullied purity of the sanctuary, and then reflect upon nature’s irremediable defilement, and ask the question, “However can we enter and dwell there?” the answer is found in” the blood and water” which flowed from the side of a crucified Christ – a Christ who gave up His life unto death for us, that we might live by Him. “There are three that bear record in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and,” blessed be God,” these three agree in one.” The Spirit does not convey to our ears a message diverse from that which we find in the Word; and both the Word and the Spirit declare to us the preciousness and efficacy of the blood.
Can we not, therefore, say that the fifteenth chapter of Leviticus was “written for our learning?” Has it not its own distinct place in the divine canon Assuredly. There would be a blank were it omitted. We learn in it what we could not learn in the same way, anywhere else. True, all Scripture teaches us the holiness of God, the vileness of nature, the efficacy of the blood, the value of the Word but the chapter upon which we have been pondering presents these great truths to our notice, and presses them upon our hearts in a manner quite peculiar to itself.
May every section of our Father’s Volume be precious to our hearts. May every one of His testimonies be sweeter to us than honey and the honeycomb, and may “every one of his righteous judgements” have its due place in our souls.
1115. Ritual Cleanliness and Uncleanliness.
Leviticus 11, Animals; Leviticus 12, Childbirth; Leviticus 13, Skin diseases (including tainted garments); Lev 14:1-32, Purgation for skin diseases; Lev 14:33-57, Leprosy in houses, and general conclusion to the Law; Leviticus 15, Issues.
Probably to most modern readers, this section is the least intelligible in the book. We must consider it (a) in its ethnological and (b) its specifically Hebrew aspect, (a) These laws are properly taboos. The term is Polynesian, signifying what is in itself, or artificially, forbidden, either for the whole community, or else for common people, or priests, or kings (p. 629). Taboos may relate to places, or to the sexes, or to certain ages. Certain kinds of food may be taboo, universally, or as determined temporarily by a chief; individuals may be taboo to one anotherspeech with a mother-in-law is very widely forbidden, and also approach to ones wife after childbirth; or the wife must not pronounce her husbands name. In the Australian initiation ceremonies, speaking is taboo to the initiates for certain periods. The origin of taboo is still obscure. What is not customary comes in time to excite horror (cf. the varying laws of decency in different primitive tribes). This horror is felt to be religious, and it can be easily used by chiefs or priests, for selfish or for hygienic purposes. (b) Heb. practice shows a notable restriction in the institution. In early times a chief could temporarily impose a ban (Jos 6:18, 1Sa 14:24); and taboos are recognised on priests (Lev 10:6, etc.) and in connexion with animals, birth, and certain diseases. Why? From the nature of things, or for moral or hygienic or ritual reasons? The suggestion of Nature is an insecure guide, since taboos on animals (e.g, swine, holy animals among Greeks and Arabs) and actions (e.g. sexual rules) vary so widely. Morality will not explain taboos on animal flesh (save that perhaps some kinds of flesh may arouse passion) or the restriction on the young mother. Hygiene may explain some taboos; but why the restriction of food to animals Levitically clean, or why should a mother be unclean for forty days after the birth of a boy, eighty days after the birth of a girl? Ritual may explain some prohibitions, as of animals which were only used in heathen rites; it may be, as Bertholet suggests, that whatever is under the protection or power of an alien god is unclean or taboo (hence perhaps the rejection of horseflesh for food; horses were sacred among the heathen Saxons; camels are forbidden to Thibetan lamas). What, then, of the infected house? Probably all four reasons were operative; given the concept of things not to be associated with ordinary life, the class would grow by the addition of things which, for various reasons, were disliked. Note the traces of systemisation in the code. The connexion of the ideas underlying it with institutions so widespread in primitive thought shows that the law carries us back to a period far anterior to Moses, though the distinction between clean and unclean is not mentioned in Exodus 21-23. Clean must be distinguished from holy. The former is the condition of intercourse with all society; the latter of approach to God. Hence, there are grades of holiness; but uncleanness exhibits only differences of duration (until the evening, etc.). The holy and the unclean, however, are alike in being untouchable by man, though for different reasons; hence the Rabbinic phrase, used of canonical books, they defile the hands (p. 39). [We may infer from Hag 2:11-13 that the infection of uncleanness was more virulent than the infection of holiness. Holy flesh could convey holiness to the skirt but the skirt could not convey it to the food it touched. The corpse could convey uncleanness to the person who touched it, and he in turn could convey it to the food. The holy communicates its quality only to one remove, the unclean to two. The reason is apparently that the holiness of a holy thing is always derivative, since nothing is holy in itself but becomes holy only through consecration to God, the sole fount of holiness (p. 196). A thing may, however, be unclean in itself. There are therefore really four terms in the holy, only three in the unclean series in this passage; viz. (a) God, holy flesh, skirt, food; (b) corpse, man unclean through contact, food. Holiness and uncleanness are thus each infectious at two removes from the source, but no further.A. S. P.] The section is probably not original in this place; it breaks the connexion between chs. 10 and 16. Some parts are distinct from the rest, e.g. Lev 11:24-40, Lev 11:43-45; Lev 13:1-46 must have been originally distinct from Lev 14:3-20. A similar code is found in Deuteronomy 14. Probably Deuteronomy 14 is a copy of an older version of Leviticus 11, e.g. Dt. omits the cormorant (17). In one respect Lev. is milder than Dt. (contrast Lev 11:39 f. with Deu 14:21). Lev. adds the permission of leaping insects, and gives a special direction as to fishes.
UNAVOIDABLE DISCHARGES (vv. 1-33)
Because leprosy speaks of the outbreak of positive sin, it required rigorous treatment. Nothing like this is intimated in chapter 15, but rather the frailty of the human body in suffering the effects of the contamination of sin through Adam, our first father. We are not in any way responsible for the sinful nature we have inherited by birth, though we are responsible for allowing that nature to manifest itself in sinful actions. The discharges spoken of here were not avoidable, but are intended as a reminder that we have inherited a sinful nature from Adam. Therefore the cleansing process was not as involved as in the case of leprosy.
We do not know how fully the people obeyed the orders given here, for in many cases the infirmity would be known only by the individual. Yet the instructions given as to restoration are of value to us today. Our very infirmities remind us that from our birth we have possessed a sinful nature, so that the birds being offered for cleansing insist upon the value of the sacrifice of Christ as the one means of meeting our sinful condition. Our infirmities need the compassionate grace of the Lord Jesus in order that we may be lifted above them. High priests taken from among men were compassed with infirmity (Heb 5:1-2 KJV), but this was not true of the Lord Jesus, who is our great High Priest. Sin had no place whatever in His nature. Not only is it true that He did no sin, but in Him there is no sin (1Jn 3:5).
4. Uncleanness due to bodily discharges associated with reproduction ch. 15
This chapter concludes the regulations on uncleanness (chs. 11-15).
"The uncleanness laws start with uncleanness that is permanent: that associated with various animals and food (ch. 11). Then they deal with the uncleanness of childbirth, which may last up to eighty days (ch. 12). Chs. 13 and 14 deal with uncleanness of indefinite duration; it all depends how long the serious skin disease persists. Finally, ch. 15 deals with discharges associated with reproduction, pollutions which usually only affect a person for up to a week. Whatever the explanation of the order of the material within chs. 11-15, these laws illuminate the day of atonement rituals, which are designed to cleanse the tabernacle ’of the uncleannesses of the Israelites’ (Lev 16:16). Without these chapters we should be at a loss to know what was the purpose of the ceremonies described in ch. 16." [Note: Ibid., p. 216.]
Moses described four cases of secretions from the reproduction organs that resulted in ritual uncleanness in this chapter. Two of these cases arose from disease and two from natural causes. The chapter opens with an introductory statement (Lev 15:1) and closes with a summary (Lev 15:32-33), which we have come to recognize as typical in this part of Leviticus. In the four central sections, there is a definition of the type of pollution, a description of its consequences, and an explanation of the appropriate rite of purification. The rite usually involved simply washing and waiting until evening.
The first two cases concern continuing and occasional emissions of the male. Moses followed these with the last two cases that reverse this order and deal with the female. The writer apparently used this chiastic literary structure to reflect the unity of humankind in two sexes. Lev 15:18, the center of the chiasm, mentions sexual intercourse, the most profound expression of the unity and interdependence of the sexes.
The first case is the secretion caused by some disease affecting a man’s sexual organs. The Hebrew word basar, translated "flesh" (Lev 15:2, et al.) has a wide range of meanings. In this context it clearly refers to the woman’s vagina (Lev 15:19) and so apparently to the man’s penis in Lev 15:2-3. The writer did not describe the physical problem in detail. The terms used seem to refer to either a diseased flow of semen (gonorrhea) or a discharge of pus from the urethra. [Note: Harrison, p. 160.] In either case this was a fairly lengthy ailment (Lev 15:3).
Another possibility is that this first case describes some affliction that both men and women suffered, such as diarrhea. The Hebrew words translated "any man" (Lev 15:2) permit this. However the structure of the chapter and the references to the sexual organs argue against this view.
Note that things that the man sat on during his defilement, those things under him (bed, chair, saddle), became unclean and a source of defilement themselves. Also any direct contact with an unclean man resulted in uncleanness for those who touched him (Lev 15:7). Here basar evidently refers to any part of the man.
"It is the uncleanness of the man and its consequences that are the main concern of this section. The striking thing about the uncleanness associated with these discharges is that not only the affected person becomes unclean, but also people and objects that come in contact with him, and these in their turn can become secondary sources of uncleanness. In this regard the uncleanness described here is much more ’infectious’ than the uncleanness of skin diseases dealt with in chs. 13-14. . . . In this respect, then, gonorrhea in men and menstrual and other female discharges are viewed as much more potent sources of defilement than others." [Note: Wenham, The Book . . ., p. 218.]
Nevertheless the uncleanness that these discharges caused was less serious ritually than those associated with skin disease. The man could live at home; he did not need to move outside the camp. He just had to wash and wait until evening (Lev 15:16; Lev 15:18); he did not need to go through a more elaborate ritual. He also needed to offer only two inexpensive sacrifices (Lev 15:14; cf. Lev 14:10-20).
OF THE UNCLEANNESS OF ISSUES
Lev 15:1-33
INASMUCH as the law concerning defilement from issues is presupposed and referred to in that concerning the defilement of child bearing, in chapter 12, it will be well to consider this before the latter. For this order there is the more reason, because, as will appear, although the two sections are separated, in the present arrangement of the book, by the law concerning defilement by leprosy (Lev 13:1-59; Lev 14:1-57), they both refer to the same general topic, and are based upon the same moral conceptions.
The arrangement of the law in Lev 15:1-33 is very simple. Lev 15:2-18 deal with the cases of ceremonial defilement by issues in men; Lev 15:19-30, with analogous cases in women. The principle in both classes is one and the same; the issue, whether normal or abnormal, rendered the person affected unclean; only, when abnormal, the defilement was regarded as more serious than in other cases, not only in a physical, but also in a ceremonial and legal aspect. In all such cases, in addition to the washing with water which was always required, it was commanded that on the eighth day from the time of the cessation of the issue, the person who had been so affected should come before the priest and present for his cleansing a sin offering and a burnt offering.
What now is the principle which underlies these regulations?
In seeking the answer to this question, we at once note the suggestive fact that this law concerning issues takes cognisance only of such as are connected with the sexual organisation. All others, however, in themselves, from a merely physical point of view, equally unwholesome or loathsome, are outside the purview of the Mosaic code. They do not render the person affected, according to the law, ceremonially unclean. It is therefore evident that the lawgiver must have had before him something other than merely the physical peculiarities of these defilements, and that, for the true meaning of this part of the law, we must look deeper than the surface. It should also be observed here that this characteristic of the law just mentioned, places the law of issues under the same general category with the law (chapter 12) concerning the uncleanness of child bearing, as indeed the latter itself intimates. {Lev 12:2} The question thus arises: Why are these particular cases, and such as these only, regarded as ceremonially defiling?
To see the reason of this, we must recur to facts which have already come before us. When our first parents sinned, death was denounced against them as the penalty of their sin. Such had been the threat: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die.” The death denounced indeed affected the whole being, the spiritual as well as the physical nature of man; but it comprehended the death of the body, which thus became, what it still is, the most impressive manifestation of the presence of sin in every person who dies. Hence, as we have seen, the law kept this connection between sin and death steadily before the mind, in that it constantly applied the principle that the dead defiles. Not only so, but, for this reason, such things as tended to bring death were also reckoned unclean; and thus the regulations of the law concerning clean and unclean meats, while strictly hygienic in character, were yet grounded in this profound ethical fact of the connection between sin and death; had man not sinned, nothing in the world had been able to bring in death, and all things had been clean. For the same reason, again, leprosy, as exemplifying in a vivid and terrible way disease as a progressive death, a living manifestation of the presence of the curse of God, and therefore of the presence of sin, a type of all disease, was regarded as involving ceremonial defilement and therefore as requiring sacrificial cleansing.
But in the curse denounced upon our first parents was yet more. It was specially taught that the curse should affect the generative power of the race. For we read: {Gen 3:16} “Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” Whatever these words may precisely mean, it is plain that they are intended to teach that, because of sin, the curse of God fell in some mysterious way upon the sexual organisation. And although the woman only is specifically mentioned, as being “first in the transgression,” that the curse fell also upon the same part of mans nature is plain from the words in Gen 5:3, where the long mortuary record of the antediluvians is introduced by the profoundly significant statement that Adam began the long line, with its inheritance of death, by begetting a son “in his own likeness, after his image.” Fallen himself under the curse of death, physical and spiritual, he therewith lost the capacity to beget a creature like himself in his original state, in the image of God, and could only be the means of bringing into the world a creature who was an inheritor of physical weakness and spiritual and bodily death.
In the light of this ancient record, which must have been before the mind of the Hebrew lawgiver, we can now see why the law concerning unclean issues should have had special relation to that part of mans physical organisation which has to do with the propagation of the race. Just as death defiled, because it was a visible representation of the presence of the curse of God, and thus of sin, as the ground of the curse, even so was it with all the issues specified in this law. They were regarded as making a man unclean, because they were manifestations of the curse in a part of mans nature which, according to the Word of God, sin has specially affected. For this reason they fell under the same law as death. They separated the person thus affected from the congregation, and excluded him from the public worship of a holy God, as making him “unclean.”
It is impossible now to miss the spiritual meaning of these laws concerning issues of this class. In that these alone, out of many others, which from a merely physical point of view are equally offensive, were taken under the cognisance of this law, the fact was thereby symbolically emphasised that the fountain of life in man is defiled. To be a sinner were bad enough, if it only involved the voluntary and habitual practice of sin. But this law of issues testifies to us, even now, that, as God sees mans case, it is far worse than this. The evil of sin is so deeply seated that it could lie no deeper. The curse has in such manner fallen on our being, as that in man and woman the powers and faculties which concern the propagation of their kind have fallen under the blight. All that any son of Adam can now do is to beget a son in his own physical and moral image, an heir of death, and by nature unclean and unholy. Sufficiently distasteful this truth is in all ages; but in none perhaps ever more so than our own, in which it has become a fundamental postulate of much popular theology, and of popular politics as well, that man is naturally not bad, but good, and, on the whole, is doing as well as under the law of evolution, and considering his environment, can reasonably be expected. The spiritual principle which underlies the law concerning defilement by issues, as also that concerning the uncleanness of child bearing, assumes the exact opposite.
It is indeed true that similar causes of ceremonial uncleanness have been recognised in ancient and in modern times among many other peoples. But this is no objection to the truth of the interpretation of the Mosaic law here given. For in so far as there is genuine agreement, the fact may rather confirm than weaken the argument for this view of the case, as showing that there is an ineradicable instinct in the heart of man which connects all that directly or indirectly has to do with the continuance of our race, in a peculiar degree, with the ideas of uncleanness and shame. And, on the other hand, the differences in such cases from the Mosaic law show us just what we should expect, -a degree of moral confusion and a deadening of the moral sense among the heathen nations, which is most significant. As has been justly remarked, the Hindoo has one law on this subject for the Brahman, another for others; the outcast for some deadly sin, often of a purely frivolous nature, and a newborn child, are reckoned equally unclean. Or, -to take the case of a people contemporary with the Hebrews, -among the ancient Chaldeans, while these same issues were accounted ceremonially defiling, as in the law of Moses, with these were also reckoned in the same category, as unclean, whatsoever was separated from the body, even to the cuttings of the hair and the parings of the nails. Evidently, we thus have here, not likeness, but a profound and most suggestive moral contrast between the Chaldean and the Hebrew law. Of the profound ethical truth which vitalises and gives deep significance to the law of Moses, we find no trace in the other system. And it is no wonder if, indeed, the one law is, as declared, a revelation from the holy God, and the other the work of sinful and sin blinded man.
It is another moral lesson which is brought before us in these laws that, as God looks at the matter, sin pertains not only to action, but also to being. Not only actions, from which we can abstain, but operations of nature which we cannot help, alike defile; defile in such a manner and degree as to require, even as voluntary acts of sin, the cleansing of water, and the expiatory blood of a sin offering. One could not avoid many of the defilements mentioned in this chapter, but that made no difference; he was unclean. For the lesser grades of uncleanness it sufficed that one be purified by washing with water; and a sin offering was only required when this purification had been neglected; but in all cases where the defilement assumed its extreme form, the sin offering and the burnt offering must be brought, and be offered for the unclean person by the priest. So is it, we are taught, with that sin of nature which these cases symbolised; we cannot help it, and yet the washing of regeneration and the cleansing of the blood of Christ is required for its removal. Very impressive in its teaching now becomes the miracle in which our Lord healed the poor woman afflicted with the issue of blood, {Mar 5:25-34} for which she had vainly sought cure. It was a case like that covered by the law in Lev 15:25-27; and he who will read and consider the provisions of that law will understand, as otherwise he could not, how great her trial and how heavy her burden must have been. He will wonder also, as never before, at the boldness of her faith, who, although, according to the law, her touch should defile the Lord, yet ventured to believe that not only should this not be so, but that the healing power which went forth from Him should neutralise the defilement, and carry healing virtue to the very centre of her life. Thus, if other miracles represent our Lord as meeting the evil of sin in its various manifestations in action, this miracle represents His healing power as reaching to the very source and fountain of life, where it is needed no less.
The law concerning the removal of these defilements, after all that has preceded, will admit only of one interpretation. The washing of water is the uniform symbol of the cleansing of the soul from pollution by the power of the Holy Ghost; the sacrifices point to the sacrifice of Christ, in its twofold aspect as burnt offering and sin offering, as required by and availing for the removal of the sinful defilement which, in the mind of God, attaches even to that in human nature which is not under the control of the will. At the same time, whereas in all these cases the sin offering prescribed is the smallest known to the law, it is symbolised, in full accord with the teaching of conscience, that the gravity of the defilement, where there has not been the active concurrence of the will, is less than where the will has seconded nature. In all cases of prolonged defilement from these sources, it was required that the affected person should still be regarded as unclean for seven days after the cessation of the infirmity, and on the eighth day came the sacrificial cleansing. The significance of the seven as the covenant number, the number also wherein was completed the old creation, has been already before us: that of “the eighth” will best be considered in connection with the provisions of chapter 12, to which we next turn our attention.
The law of this chapter has a formal closing, in which are used these words (Lev 15:31): “Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile My tabernacle that is in the midst of them.”
Of which the natural meaning is this, that the defilements mentioned, as conspicuous signs of mans fallen condition, were so offensive before a holy God, as apart from these purifications to have called down the judgment of death on those in whom they were found. In these words lies also the deeper spiritual thought-if we have rightly apprehended the symbolic import of these regulations-that not only, as in former cases mentioned under the law of offerings, do voluntary acts of sin separate from God and if unatoned for call down His judgment, but that even our infirmities and the involuntary motions of sin in our nature have the same effect, and, apart from the cleansing of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, ensure the final judgment of death.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary