Leviticus 12

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:57utc

Purification at Birth

According to the law of Moses, a woman who gives birth to a baby is ceremonially unclean. Her impurity lasts thirty-three days if the baby is a boy and sixty-six days when it is a girl. Even as in the preceding chapters, no explanation is given as to why this is so.

The birth of a human being in this world is a holy and glorious event. This chapter shows, more than anything else, how serious the damage sin has caused in life is. Sin has affected the source of life itself. A woman who brings a child into the world makes herself impure, because the human being she brings forth is impure. That must be the point of this chapter. Man has a sinful nature. He enters the world unclean and he pollutes the person who brings him into the world.

The actual period of impurity for the mother is not thirty-three and sixty-six days, but respectively one or two weeks. The following period of thirty-three or sixty-six days is the time of purification. Vs. 4 says: "Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding." The RSV renders it: "Then she shall continue for thirty-three days in the blood of her purifying." The latter reading is, undoubtedly, literally more correct. What this involves, we do not know. It does not mean that she goes to the tabernacle or into the temple because that was forbidden for her during this time.

The question remains why a difference is made between the birth of a boy and a girl. The circumcision of the baby boy has, no doubt, something to do with the shortening of the period of purification. It is also possible that the longer period of purification at the birth of a girl has to do with the fact that the girl will become a mother herself and will become unclean when she gives birth. Also, sin first came into the world through the woman.

The sacrifice to be brought at the end of the period of purification consists of two parts: a burnt offering and a sin offering. The sin offering refers to the corrupted nature of man. The burnt offering points to the divine love that gives itself and that is the "raison d'être" for man. This burnt offering could be a sheep or, for poor people, a young pigeon or a turtle dove. The sin offering was always one of those two birds.

The only known example of the poor man's sacrifice recorded in the Bible was at the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We read in Luke: "When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, 'Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord'), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: 'a pair of doves or two young pigeons.' "[ 1 ] That passage speaks about a combination of the purification rite and the consecration of the first born son. This latter rite was prescribed in connection with the Exodus from Egypt.[ 2 ] The fact that Joseph and Mary brought a pair of doves puts them in the class of the poor.

[ 1 ] Luke 2:22-24

[ 2 ] Ex. 13:1-16