Leviticus 12:3 Komentář

After the laws concerning clean and unclean food come the laws concerning clean and unclean persons; and the first is in this chapter concerning the ceremonial uncleanness of women in child-birth (Lev 12:1-5). And concerning their purification from that uncleanness (Lev 12:6, etc.).

INTRODUCTION TO LEVITICUS 12 This chapter treats of the purification of a new mother, the time of whose purification for a man child was forty days, and for a maid child eighty, Lev 12:1 at the close of which she was to bring her offerings to the priests, to make atonement for her, Lev 12:6.

And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Or the foreskin of his flesh, that is, of the man child born according to the law, Gen 17:12 and this seems to furnish out a reason why a male child was not circumcised before the eighth day, and why it was then, because before that its mother was in her separation and uncleanness, and then was freed from it; and so the Targum of Jonathan. The circumcision of a male child on the eighth day was religiously observed, and even was not omitted on account of the sabbath, when the eighth day happened to be on that; see Gill on Joh 7:22, Joh 7:23. It is an observation of Aben Ezra on this place, that the wise men say "in the day", and not in the night, lo, he that is born half an hour before the setting of the sun is circumcised after six days and a half, for the day of the law is not from time to time. . It is an observation of Aben Ezra on this place, that the wise men say "in the day", and not in the night, lo, he that is born half an hour before the setting of the sun is circumcised after six days and a half, for the day of the law is not from time to time. Leviticus 12:4 lev 12:4 lev 12:4 lev 12:4And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days,.... That is, so many more, in all forty; for though at the end of seven days she was in some respects free from her uncleanness, yet not altogether, but remained in the blood of her purifying, or in the purifying of her blood, which was more and more purified, and completely at the end of forty days: so with the Persians it is said, a new mother must avoid everything for forty days; when that time is passed, she may wash and be purified (n); and which perhaps Zoroastres, the founder of the Persian religion, at least the reformer of it, being a Jew, as is by some supposed, he might take it from hence: she shall touch no hallowed thing; as the tithe, the heave offering, the flesh of the peace offerings, as Aben Ezra explains it, if she was a priest's wife: nor come into the sanctuary; the court of the tabernacle of the congregation, or the court of the temple, as the same writer observes; and so with the Greeks, a pregnant woman might not come into a temple before the fortieth day (o), that is, of her delivery: until the days of her purifying be fulfilled; until the setting of the sun of the fortieth day; on the morrow of that she was to bring the atonement of her purification, as Jarchi observes; See Gill on Lev 12:6. (n) Lib. Shad-der, port. 86. apud Hyde Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers. p. 478. (o) Censorinus apud Grotium in loc.

It was certainly not for nothing that the commandment was given for the child “to be circumcised on the eighth day”; it can only have been because the rock, the stone with which we are circumcised, was Christ. It was “with knives of rock” or stone that the people were circumcised;“now the rock was Christ.” So why on the eighth day? Because in seven-day weeks the first is the same as the eighth; once you’ve completed the seven days, you are back at the first. The seventh is finished, the Lord is buried; we are back at the first, the Lord is raised up. The Lord’s resurrection, you see, promised us an eternal day and consecrated for us the Lord’s day. It’s called the Lord’s because it properly belongs to the Lord, because on it the Lord rose again. The rock has been restored to us; let those be circumcised who wish to say, “For we are the circumcision.”

Ordinances concerning the purification of women after child-birth, Lev 12:1; after the birth of a son, who is to be circumcised the eighth day, Lev 12:2, Lev 12:3. The mother to be considered unclean for forty days, Lev 12:4. After the birth of a daughter, fourscore days, Lev 12:5. When the days of her purifying were ended, she was to bring a lamb for a burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a sin-offering, Lev 12:6, Lev 12:7. If poor, and not able to bring a lamb, she was to bring either two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, Lev 12:8.

And in the eighth day - Before this time the child could scarcely be considered as having strength sufficient to bear the operation; after this time it was not necessary to delay it, as the child was not considered to be in covenant with God, and consequently not under the especial protection of the Divine providence and grace, till this rite had been performed. On circumcision see Clarke's note on Gen 17:10. Circumcision was to every man a constant, evident sign of the covenant into which he had entered with God, and of the moral obligations under which he was thereby laid. It was also a means of purity, and was especially necessary among a people naturally incontinent, and in a climate not peculiarly favorable to chastity. This is a light in which this subject should ever be viewed, and in which we see the reasonableness, propriety, expediency, and moral tendency of the ceremony.

WOMAN'S UNCLEANNESS BY CHILDBIRTH. (Lev 12:1-8) If a woman, &c.--The mother of a boy was ceremonially unclean for a week, at the end of which the child was circumcised (Gen 17:12; Rom 4:11-13); the mother of a girl for two weeks (Lev 12:5) --a stigma on the sex (Ti1 2:14-15) for sin, which was removed by Christ; everyone who came near her during that time contracted a similar defilement. After these periods, visitors might approach her though she was still excluded from the public ordinances of religion [Lev 12:4].

Laws of Purification - Leviticus 12-15 The laws concerning defilement through eating unclean animals, or through contact with those that had died a natural death, are followed by rules relating to defilements proceeding from the human body, in consequence of which persons contaminated by them were excluded for a longer or shorter period from the fellowship of the sanctuary, and sometimes even from intercourse with their fellow-countrymen, and which had to be removed by washing, by significant lustrations, and by expiatory sacrifices. They comprised the uncleanness of a woman in consequence of child-bearing (Lev 12:1-8), leprosy (ch. 13 and 14), and both natural and diseased secretions from the sexual organs of either male or female (emissio seminis and gonorrhaea, also menses and flux: ch. 15); and to these there is added in Num 19:11-22, defilement proceeding from a human corpse. Involuntary emission defiled the man; voluntary emission, in sexual intercourse, both the man and the woman and any clothes upon which it might come, for an entire day, and this defilement was to be removed in the evening by bathing the body, and by washing the clothes, etc. (Lev 15:16-18). Secretions from the sexual organs, whether of a normal kind, such as the menses and those connected with child-birth, or the result of disease, rendered not only the persons affected with them unclean, but even their couches and seats, and any persons who might sit down upon them; and this uncleanness was even communicated to persons who touched those who were diseased, or to anything with which they had come in contact (Lev 15:3-12, Lev 15:19-27). In the case of the menses, the uncleanness lasted seven days (Lev 15:19, Lev 15:24); in that of child-birth, either seven or fourteen days, and then still further thirty-three or sixty-six, according to circumstances (Lev 12:2, Lev 12:4-5); and in that of a diseased flux, as long as the disease itself lasted, and seven days afterwards (Lev 15:13, Lev 15:28); but the uncleanness communicated to others only lasted till the evening. In all these cases the purification consisted in the bathing of the body and washing of the clothes and other objects. But if the uncleanness lasted more than seven days, on the day after the purification with water a sin-offering and a burnt-offering were to be offered, that the priest might pronounce the person clean, or receive him once more into the fellowship of the holy God (Lev 12:6, Lev 12:8; Lev 15:14-15, Lev 15:29-30). Leprosy made those who were affected with it so unclean, that they were excluded from all intercourse with the clean (Lev 13:45-46): and on their recovery they were to be cleansed by a solemn lustration, and received again with sacrifices into the congregation of the Lord (Lev 14:1-32). There are no express instructions as to the communicability of leprosy; but this is implied in the separation of the leper from the clean (Lev 13:45-46), as well as from the fact that a house affected by the leprosy rendered all who entered it, or slept in it, unclean (Lev 14:46-47). The defilement caused by a death was apparently greater still. Not only the corpse of a person who had died a natural death, as well as of one who had been killed by violence, but a dead body or grave defiled, for a period of seven days, both those who touched them, and (in the case of the corpse) the house in which the man had died, all the persons who were in it or might enter it, and all the open vessels that were there (Num 19:11, Num 19:14-16). Uncleanness of this kind could only be removed by sprinkling water prepared from running water and the ashes of a sin-offering (Num 19:12, Num 19:17.), and would even spread from the persons defiled to persons and things with which they came in contact, so as to render them unclean till the evening (Num 19:22); whereas the defilement caused by contact with a dead animal lasted only a day, and then, like every other kind of uncleanness that only lasted till the evening, could be removed by bathing the persons or washing the things (Lev 11:25.). But whilst, according to this, generation and birth as well as death were affected with uncleanness; generation and death, the coming into being and the going out of being, were not defiling in themselves, or regarded as the two poles which bound, determine, and enclose the finite existence, so as to warrant us in tracing the principle which lay at the foundation of the laws of purification, as Bhr supposes, "to the antithesis between the infinite and the finite being, which falls into the sphere of the sinful when regarded ethically as the opposite to the absolutely holy." Finite existence was created by God, quite as much as the corporeality of man; and both came forth from His hand pure and good. Moreover it is not begetting, giving birth, and dying, that are said to defile; but the secretions connected with generation and child-bearing, and the corpses of those who had died. In the decomposition which follows death, the effect of sin, of which death is the wages, is made manifest in the body. Decomposition, as the embodiment of the unholy nature of sin, is uncleanness κατ ̓ ἐξοχξήν; and this the Israelite, who was called to sanctification in fellowship with God, was to avoid and abhor. Hence the human corpse produced the greatest amount of defilement; so great, in fact, that to remove it a sprinkling water was necessary, which had been strengthened by the ashes of a sin-offering into a kind of sacred alkali. Next to the corpse, there came on the one hand leprosy, that bodily image of death which produced all the symptoms of decomposition even in the living body, and on the other hand the offensive secretions from the organs of generation, which resemble the putrid secretions that are the signs in the corpse of the internal dissolution of the bodily organs and the commencement of decomposition. From the fact that the impurities, for which special rites of purification were enjoined, are restricted to these three forms of manifestation in the human body, it is very evident that the laws of purification laid down in the O.T. were not regulations for the promotion of cleanliness or of good morals and decency, that is to say, were not police regulations for the protection of the life of the body from contagious diseases and other things injurious to health; but that their simple object was "to impress upon the mind a deep horror of everything that is and is called death in the creature, and thereby to foster an utter abhorrence of everything that is or is called sin, and also, to the constant humiliation of fallen man, to remind him in all the leading processes of the natural life-generation, birth, eating, disease, death - how everything, even his own bodily nature, lies under the curse of sin (Gen 3:14-19), that so the law might become a 'schoolmaster to bring unto Christ,' and awaken and sustain the longing for a Redeemer from the curse which had fallen upon his body also (see Gal 3:24; Rom 7:24; Rom 8:19.; Phi 3:21)." Leyrer.

After the expiration of this period, on the eighth day, the boy was to be circumcised (see at Gen 17). She was then to sit, i.e., remain at home, thirty-three days in the blood of purification, without touching anything holy or coming to the sanctuary (she was not to take any part, therefore, in the sacrificial meals, the Passover, etc.), until the days of her purification were full, i.e., had expired.