Leviticus 12
ButlerNOTE.—The text is sufficiently indicated as well as explained in the comment.
Throughout the entire Levitical economy, purity is the predominating idea, pervading all its ceremonies and observances. The priests, the sacrifices, the people, were to be purified, the camp was to be purified, everything was to be purified and repurified. E. C. W.—Each process of the ordinances was designed to reflect purity upon the others; until that idea of purity, formed in the mind and rendered intense by the convergence of so many rays, was transferred to God—in whom as a moral being it would become moral purity, or holiness. That the idea of moral purity in the minds of the Israelites was thus originated by the machinery of the Levitical dispensation, is supported by many allusions in the Scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New. Walker.
Divine wisdom was imparted to the people of Israel not in that form which was best in itself, but in that in which they were best able to bear it; and being very much the creatures of sense, religious principles were communicated through the medium of sensible images. To convince them of the inherent defilement attached to sin and of the necessity of being purified from it by a method of God’s devising, it was enjoined that several incidents, such as touching a dead body, the disease of leprosy, and some others, should be considered as polluting the person whom they befell; in consequence of which they were pronounced unclean, and separated from the camp and the tabernacle. To every instance of ceremonial defilement there are two circumstances attached—the forfeiture of certain privileges, especially that of approaching God in his sanctuary; and a representation of the defiling nature of sin. R. Hall.
Besides the great types of atonement for sin and justification of the sinner, there was also a remarkable detail of ritual expressive of the sinfulness of man by nature and practice, and the need of purification by the Holy Spirit. To this ritual belongs all those provisions for purifying and sprinkling and washing; the “diverse baptism” of which the apostle speaks.
To this ritual must be referred all the provisions concerning clean and unclean beasts and birds, many of them being declared unclean though wholesome and nutritious; the provisions of purification after defilement by the touch of a dead body, etc. In short, the general idea is that everything that pertains to the worship of the tabernacle, and everything about it, must speak of the ineffable purity of Jehovah. And so the true worshippers are reminded at every turn that they are “a nation of kings and priests”—a people peculiarly belonging to Jehovah. S. R.
Legal pollution was not in any mode or degree connected with the personal sin of the individual by whom it was occasioned or contracted. It originated only in certain physical conditions. The corpse of a saint was as impure as that of the most degraded criminal, and any human corpse communicated even a greater degree of impurity by contact or approximation than the body of an animal. The Law made no distinction between the leprosy which an unoffending child inherited from its parents and that which might have been inflicted as a visitation for crime. All need of purification without doubt took its rise in a sense of the sinfulness of man. Legal uncleanness would not else have excluded the person from participation in the service of the sanctuary. But the connection between sin and uncleanness is not immediate. The connecting links between them are the disease and death which are the offspring of sin. The pains of childbirth and the suffering of death were the two sentences pronounced by God upon mankind after the first sin. The case seems to be strengthened by the fact that the diseased conditions of uncleanness (Lev. 15:2, 25), compared with the healthy ones, are treated as if they had a double ground of pollution; they alone require sacrificial atonement. The conclusion then appears to be reasonable that all the rites of purification were intended to remind the Israelite that he belonged to a fallen race and that he needed a purification and atonement which he could not effect for himself. Clark.
Motherhood involved a longer or shorter period of ceremonial separation—forty days in the case of a son, seventy days in the case of a daughter, after which a burnt-offering and a sin-offering are to be presented to the Lord, and atonement made for her that she may be clean.
Elgar.—It is to be emphatically denied that the Bible gives any encouragement to the sentiment that the mere act of giving birth, or the fact of having given birth, is a defilement. The condition into which a woman is brought by the birth of a child is said rather to be like the impurity of her monthly illness (verse 2). It was, to a certain extent, the effect and evidence of death. Such death, as the penalty of sin, had not only a physical, but a moral, character. One needed, therefore, to be ceremonially purified from it. E. C. B.—The explanation of this statute on maternity we shall find in the fact that there is connected with it that which is painfully suggestive of sin. The sorrow of maternity points clearly to the primeval curse, and therefore to the primeval sin. The birth of a human child means the entrance into the world of one in whom are the germs of sin. Hence sin is associated with the birth of the human infant, and the physical condition (verse 7) attending it is typical of sin, constitutes “uncleanness,” and necessitates purification. W. C.—As in the whole province of unclean meats man was not internally defiled, but was continually reminded of the desecration of the creation by sin, and as the prohibition about unclean meats was a call to abstain from all communion with sin and its consequences, in like manner is to be regarded the declaration of uncleanness in these natural relations which are not sinful in themselves, but are especially liable by misuse to become sinful, and which carry with them the stigma of sin. With no other people of antiquity was marriage so honored, founded as it was on express Divine institution. Among no other people do we find, through their religious idea of death, so reverential a care for the rites of sepulture. If then procreation, birth, and death caused defilement, we perceive therein in emblem and germ the doctrine which was more clearly revealed in the New Testament, which teaches us that the flesh created by God, and originally good, has nevertheless, by sin which dwelt in it, been made the means of exciting sinful desire. Gerl.
3. Shall be circumcised.** As the mother and the father are members of the community of Israel, the child is in this respect also counted with them. On these grounds he receives the sign of circumcision. The origin and meaning of this rite we have in Gen. 17. As the symbol of moral renewal, it implies the existence of depravity. But the mother in Israel having passed through her ceremonial defilement is now clean, and her child is clean with her. As the descendant of a circumcised father he has the inheritance of circumcision, the outward token of the covenant of grace. This involves the principle that in the right order of things the offspring of pious parents will be pious. It cannot mean that circumcision is itself regeneration. This would be to make a rite a charm, instead of a symbol of precious truth.
No event is more interesting to the parent or to the race than the birth of a child. In a state of innocence it would have been a source of unmingled and unutterable gladness. But the fall casts a shade of impenetrable darkness over the birth of a child of man. All that reason can say is, that this is another child of sin and heir of death. Hence the insertion of this short and reassuring chapter in the book of propitiation. For the mother in Israel is here taught that while there is impurity and guilt connected with the bearer and the born of the fallen race, yet there is a propitiation on which she may rely for herself and for her offspring, and a purification which she has for herself and may ask and confidently expect for her child, while she trains him up in the way he should go. This encourages believing parents to enter upon the task of training up their child for glory, honor, and immortality. As the mother and her child emerge out of the impurity, she learns to hope for the day when both will emerge out of the bondage and corruption of sin; as the mother offers her burnt-sacrifice and sin-sacrifice she rejoices in the knowledge that there is a propitiation that is sufficient for her and for her children and her children’s children to all generations. This chapter could not be wanting in the book of atonement; and assuredly it has not been written in vain. M.