Leviticus 15

This chapter contains one communication, which is made to Moses and Aaron together, by whom it is to be conveyed to the people. It is on the subject of issues which involve uncleanness. It gives directions concerning an issue to which men are liable (1-15), the seed of cohabitation (16-18), the monthly secretion of women (19-24), and a bloody flux in women (25-30), followed by a conclusion (31-33). M.

In this chapter the defilement of sin is the leading thought. Here again there can be no doubt that there was a sanitary element in the regulations. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is not, as some suppose, a Bible sentence, but it is beyond all question a Bible sentiment. The first all-embracing law of the Mosaic economy is, Be holy. And the second is like unto it, Be clean: clean in person, clean in garments, clean in house, clean in camp, clean everywhere. Who can tell how much the world owes to these “health laws of Moses?” “It is certainly a curious thing,” writes one who is an authority on the subject, “worthy the notice of every student of the progress of the human race, whether his standpoint be religious or purely scientific, that the moving camp in the wilderness was governed by as strict and perfect a sanitary code as any sanitary commission could now devise.” But in the Mosaic institutes the purity of the soul was ever kept before the mind as the main thing to be desired and secured. “Our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,” was always the first thing; “our bodies washed with pure water,” was the second (Heb. 10 : 22); and throughout the book of the Law these two have been by God so joined together that no candid mind can put them asander. J. M. G.

2. Hath an issue**, literally, is flowing or discharging. There are many diseases common to both sexes, which are characterized by a discharge of some kind. In his issue he is unclean. This is the point in question. The malady is not otherwise regarded than as an occasion of uncleanness. M.—We are not to look for a moral basis for the regulation on account of any vicious habit connected with such issues. They are repulsive, and simply for that reason they are causes of ceremonial uncleanness to those who suffer from them, and to those who come in contact with persons suffering from them. F. M.

4-12. There is a strong feeling of loathsome-ness called forth by these descriptions—emblematic of the abhorrence wherewith those of a pure and holy nature must look upon sin—even that sin from which we are saved not by water only, but by water and blood, like as the uncleanness here had to be removed not by a washing alone, but also by a sacrifice. T. C.

By reason of the inherent depravity of nature growing out of the fall, the powers of human life are tainted with corruption, and all that pertains to the production of life, as well as to its cessation, appears enveloped in the garments of impurity. That the whole was mainly viewed in this strictly moral light, and not merely in relation to natural health or cleanliness, is evident not only from the predominantly ethical character of the whole legislation of Moses, but also from the kind of purifications prescribed, in which atonement is spoken of as being made in behalf of the parties concerned; and also from the references made to the cases under consideration in other parts of Scripture (Ezek. 36:17; Lam. 1:17), which point to them as defilements in a moral respect. There is no possibility of obtaining a satisfactory view of the subject, or accounting for the place assigned such things in the symbolical ritual of Moses, excepting on the ground of that moral taint which was believed to pervade all the powers and productions of human nature. P. F.

14, 15, 29, 30. For these uncleannesses, involuntary and secret, God provided a fitting atonement. 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 whole analysis of sin in these chapters (Lev. 13-15) is profound and philosophical. In fact, portions of Scripture apparently repulsive become replete with wholesome truth when handled humbly and reverently. Edgar.

Dc. 9-14. Cleanliness a religious duty. The precepts in this paragraph refer to the inculcation of cleanliness, both in camp and in person. We get here, moreover, an illustration of that which so often occurs in the Law of Moses—viz., that duties of the lowest, humblest order are urged on the people by the highest and noblest sanctions. Common work may be dignified by great motives. It will be regarded by a wise Christian man as a part of his duty which is by no means to be neglected, to maintain order and unsullied cleanliness in person and home. C. C.

While these minute details neither require nor reward particular investigation in our day, yet taken in whole they are pregnant with great moral lessons for all time. There was a perpetual inculcation of cleanliness, external purity, and the most careful avoidance of whatever was defiling. The ceremonial washings and cleansings, the removal from the camp, or as the case may be, the seclusion from the court of the tabernacle for a term of purification, occur frequently. By a natural law of mind, sin is associated with uncleanness; crime is defiling. Hence, with almost infinite pains the Lord was impressing upon his people the great idea that their God who deigned to dwell among them “was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” He could not abide with them save as they kept themselves clean and pure. H. C.—By these laws they were taught their privilege and honor, that they were purified unto God a peculiar people, and were intended by the holy God for a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. They were also taught to preserve the honor of their purity, and to keep themselves from all sinful pollutions. It was easy for them to argue that if those pollutions which were natural, unavoidable, involuntary, their affliction and not their sin, rendered them for the time so odious that they were not fit for communion either with God or man, much more abominable and filthy were they if they sinned against the light and law of nature, by drunkenness, adultery, fraud, and the like sins, which defile the very mind and conscience. And if these ceremonial pollutions could not be done away but by sacrifice and offering, something greater and much more valuable must be expected and depended upon for the purifying of the soul from the uncleanness of sin. H.

All this mystically teaches us to beware of courting or choosing the conversation of those that have received any tincture of vice, and not to contract acquaintance with any persons who we have reason to believe are not on good terms with God. There is such a venomous contagion in vice and immorality that familiarity with sinners does, of itself, make a man an associate in their practices: so saith the son of Sirach (Ecclus. 13:1), and thus the apostle commands (1 Tim. 5:22). Biblioth. Bibl.—All those details of Divine precept, by which every person and article anywise brought into contact with the unclean man or woman became unclean, bring out the 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, 4, 12; Col. 3:8)! W. C.

That plain-speaking and plain-dealing, such as we find in the Book of Leviticus, was necessary, is amply proved by the history of the ancient world, and of the modern world, too. The Bible is the only book that has exercised any considerable effect in keeping men and women pure. There are many books, where everything offensive to the ear is studiously avoided, which nevertheless are very poison to the soul. In the Bible, on the other hand, while there is not a little that is offensive to the ear, there is absolutely nothing that is poisonous to the spirit, unless the spirit has been poisoned already; for we must remember that while “to the pure all things are pure,” “unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.” There is absolutely nothing in the entire Bible that will not exert a holy and purifying influence on those who read it in the right spirit. And as a historical fact, such has been the result among those who have made these Scriptures their companion and counsellor. The Jews alone among the nations of antiquity had even the conception of purity as we understand it now. Consider for a moment whence we derive those exalted notions of purity which are widely prevalent in modern society, especially among Christian people. Even the purest and the best of Greek philosophers, those who in other respects have come nearest to Bible ethics, are wofully behind in regard to personal purity of heart and life, some of them tolerating and others approving that which enlightened Christian sentiment utterly condemns. Let any one fairly investigate the genesis and “evolution” of our modern ideas of chastity and purity, and he will find that they are traceable chiefly to the Hebrew Scriptures as their source. And so the remarkable fact will present itself that to these very Scriptures, and largely to those parts of them where the corrupt imagination of certain cavillers finds an indecency which is all its own, we owe that very sentiment of delicacy which makes it impossible for us to read them aloud in public or in the family. J. M. G.

THROUGH the whole Bible history of the Jews we find from the date of their organization as a nation a system of sacrifices, framed first as a compensation or atonement for certain civil and ceremonial offences, and next as expressing the need of a propitiation in approaching to God. The system was cumbersome and meaningless except in this latter view. But going back of the Levitical ritual instituted in the wilderness, to Noah as the priest of a new world, and back again beyond the flood to Abel, we find a custom of sacrifice for which no mere natural instinct or reason can fully account. In the system of Moses we know this was expressly enjoined by God; and the prophets, while they denounced any neglect or abuse of sacrifice as a crime, also insisted that the sacrifice was worthless unless its spiritual significance was kept in view by the offerer. Here then we have the same principle of unity and of development in the language of symbol and ritual as in the verbal promise (Gen. 3): the primitive rudimental conception of sacrifice by way of atonement for sin; this conception unfolded in a great number and variety of sacrifices, in which, however, the central figure was ever the Lamb slain, and the central thought the redemption of sin; and all these emblems and types meeting in Christ by his own interpretation of his death and the exposition of it by the apostles as the consummation of this system, which then vanished away as but the prophetic shadow, the outline sketch of the True—when the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world was offered once for all to take away sin. And so the death of Christ verifies, interprets, and transfigures that mysterious system which had else remained without a key. The unity that runs through the religion of the Bible in its treatment of sin and reconciliation, a treatment foreign to all rationalistic conceptions of man’s approach to God, argues the Divine impress upon the original conception, the law of its unfolding, the dread mystery and glory of its consummation through the cross. J. P. T.

The system of Levitical worship, so far as we can see, was the only method by which there was any possibility of imparting to apostate humanity those lost ideas of God’s purity and justice, and those new ideas of God’s mercy and redemption, which were to be the only prop and hope of the race. There were no words in human language to represent such ideas, because the ideas themselves were wanting; and to create them it was needful that corresponding things should be presented to the senses; and so the Levitical ritual enacted before the eye its expressive promise of the coming Restorer. W. Adams.—The idea of God was embodied to the senses in a visible temple—of his holiness in an awful shrine or sanctuary, fenced off from curious gaze and unhallowed step. The notion of a Divine order pervading human life was lodged in regulations for food and dress, distinctions between things clean and unclean, minute prescriptions and rules for all the varied relations and exigencies of social existence. The conceptions of sin, guilt, penitence, prayer, of atonement, pardon, purity, self-devotion, were forced on the senses, and drilled into minds otherwise incapable of rising to them, by laws of ceremonial exclusion, priests, costly sacrifices, sprinklings, lustrations—by the life’s blood of victims dyeing the altar, or borne by priestly hands into the awful presence of the Deity—by the mysterious flight of the sin-burdened goat into a region of darkness and forgetfulness. Without these and other manifold aids to thought, spiritual ideas, to such a race, would have been unattainable. In a more spiritual and reflective age, on the other hand, in which the spiritual perceptions have become developed, and the mind has become receptive of direct religious instruction, such sensible helps to the formation of thought are no longer necessary. In the old dispensation ritual observances constituted an elaborate mechanism for the awakening of religious thought and feeling; in the new economy, they are the actual and voluntary manifestation of religious thought and feeling already existing. Caird.

Practically regarded, the Levitical sacrifices are noteworthy, first, as a means of religious education, and next as a means of religious satisfaction. They evolved religious sentiment, and they appeased it. However superficially this sacrificial cultus be regarded, it assuredly proclaimed such truths as these: the sinfulness of man, the Divine alienation consequent thereupon, the need of atonement, its possibility, its method, the acceptability of the service of the reconciled. All these truths—which, to judge from Christianity, constitute the essentials of a religion adapted to man—were taught by arresting symbolism and an imposing ceremonial. They were equally capable of educating up to a high degree of religiousness and of ministering to the religious needs so matured. They affected too the whole range of life, training the Church, sanctifying the State, penetrating the home, and affecting the individual. They interwoven the essentials of religion with all the relationships, duties, sorrows, and pleasures of life. According to its own ideal, the Jewish nation was a Theocracy where reconciled rebels gave their every allegiance to the King of kings acceptably. Thus, historically regarded, and without trespassing upon or forestalling the later revelations made by Christ and his apostles, the Levitical sacrifices are seen to be a profound recognition of the wants of man, and a response to his deepest needs. The Levitical sacrifices declared unmistakably, from the hour of their first promulgation, the necessity there was for atonement, and the Divine provision for that necessity. Indeed, it is simple truth to say that there is not a feature of the Levitical sacrifices which does not accentuate in some way, either the fact of estrangement from God with its large disabilities, or the fact of reconciliation to God with its large privileges. Cure.

Under the Old Covenant there was certainly a most elaborate arrangement for the relief of burdened consciences and the purification of the unclean. Jehovah declared himself again and again to be “merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.” His throne between the cherubim was a mercy-seat; and the penitent who embraced these comforting promises found an open way back into the favor of a pardoning God. What then ailed the Old Covenant, as a revelation of Divine mercy? How comes it to be said that first by Jesus Christ came grace and truth, since every true religion or stage in the revelation of God must have much to say of his grace as well as of his justice? Here lay the defect: that what Divine grace led sinners to hope for, there was no provision under the Law effectively to provide. To put much in a single word: What the Mosaic religion wanted was power.

Take for illustration its promises of pardon. It certainly revealed God as a forgiving God to the people of his covenant and encouraged the penitent to count on pardon. But it furnished no sufficient or real means of cleansing for the guilty conscience (Heb. 7). There were priests; but they were only men like others, officially but not really raised above their brethren, and soon removed by death. There was an altar of expiation; but the blood upon it was the blood of beasts, which could never take away sins. There was a mercy-seat; but the way to reach it was not yet laid open. In form and outward show, there stood in Israel a complete apparatus for the cleansing of unclean men that they might be reassured of Divine favor; but it was only “in a figure.” The power was awunting. The sacrifices could not make the worshippers perfect as touching the conscience. The sins confessed were not actually purged away and forgotten. The whole ritual was a symbol of something else; a “shadow,” or mimic representation; a “parable for the time being;” a “copy” or “image” merely of certain real and spiritual transactions which had still to be transacted. Hence, the Law completed nothing as a system of grace; it achieved nothing. It prefigured only; it foretold. But, blessed be God! with Jesus Christ there has come the very truth and reality of expiation. Confess over his sacrifice; it has once for all put away your sins. Draw near unto God by this Priest; he ever liveth to intercede for you. Put your trust in his blood; it will cleanse your conscience from dead works. Approach the most holy place with boldness; he has dedicated it for us by his entrance into heaven. Then be of good cheer; for the New Covenant is established on better promises than the Old. It makes no more remembrance of sin. By one offering Christ hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. “The Law as given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

A further illustration of the Mosaic Law’s feebleness was its imperfect provision for sanctifying human life. Under this aspect, too, what it wanted was power. By elaborate ceremonies of lustration and sprinkling, by splendid offerings of self-surrender and dedication to God, it was forever proclaiming the sanctity of the chosen people and their separation as a nation of priests to the service of the Most High. But while it demanded holiness of life and symbolized it in ritual, it did not clearly reveal the only means through which man can be made holy. New birth by the Holy Spirit of God, adoption as sons into his family of love, with the Spirit’s indwelling as the source of inward purity—these were truths shadowed very dimly indeed under the Old, reserved to be the crowning glories of the New Covenant.

Perfect, then, and exquisite as the legal economy was for its own temporary and educational purpose, and noble as were many of the lives which grew up beneath its teaching, it was, after all, to the Gospel as dawn is to noon. The elder saints saw but the blossom where we taste the fruit. As the King himself testified, he who is least in the New Kingdom stands in privilege and insight above the greatest of the Old. Let us see that we prize and duly use our higher opportunity, lest the last should come in the end to be the first. Dykes.

UNLAWFUL MARRIAGES. DIVORCE. MARRYING A BROTHER’S WIDOW. JEALOUSY OFFERING. PUNISHMENT OF A DEFAMING HUSBAND. SINS AGAINST CHASTITY.