The Book of Leviticus

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter deals, with the plain dignity of Scripture, with the bodily discharges that rendered a person ceremonially unclean, both a man's abnormal running issue and the ordinary emissions of life. These were not treated as sins; a person did nothing wrong by having a body that functioned as bodies do. Yet each such thing brought a season of uncleanness, and whatever the person touched, a bed, a seat, another person, became unclean too, spreading the defilement outward. Cleansing came in a set way: the person "shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water," and wait the appointed days, "and shall be clean." For a lasting issue, offerings were also required to make atonement. The pattern is constant: defilement clung to the body, but washing and time, and where needed, blood, made the unclean clean again.

Gospel Focus

These laws press on us a humbling truth: in a fallen world, defilement is pervasive, reaching even into the ordinary and unavoidable workings of the body. It is a daily parable of the condition Paul lamented, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24). The point is not that the body is evil, for God made it and calls it good, but that we live in bodies marked by the fall, in a world where impurity clings to us without our even choosing it. And notice that the defilement spread by contact; uncleanness passed to whatever it touched. Sin is like that too, quietly infecting what it comes near. But grace answers with cleansing, always available, always sufficient. The washing in running water points to the "washing of water by the word" and to the deeper cleansing of the blood of Christ, which reaches the impurity we cannot escape. We cannot keep ourselves undefiled by our own effort in such a world; we can only keep coming to the fountain that God has opened for uncleanness.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter turns to the woman. The natural monthly issue brought a set time of separation; but a woman whose "issue of her blood" ran "many days," beyond the ordinary time, was to be treated as unclean for the whole duration, however long it lasted. Such a condition could stretch on for years, and all that while she carried a continual defilement that touched everything and everyone around her, keeping her from the sanctuary and the fellowship of worship. When at last she was healed, she counted seven days, washed, and brought two birds, and "the priest shall make an atonement for her." Behind the ceremonial detail lies real human hardship: a woman bearing not only a wearying affliction of the body but the long isolation of being perpetually unclean.

Gospel Focus

This is the exact condition of one of the most moving women in the Gospels. She "had an issue of blood twelve years," Mark tells us, and had spent all she had on physicians, growing worse. For twelve years she had been unclean under this law, cut off from the temple, unable to touch anyone without defiling them. Then she heard of Jesus and thought, "If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole" (Mark 5:28). By the law of Leviticus, her touch should have made Him unclean; instead, His power made her whole. The flow of defilement was reversed by the flow of His grace, and He sent her away with tender words: "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace" (Mark 5:34). What years of law and physicians could not do, a moment's faith touching Christ accomplished. Here is the gospel in a single scene: the incurably unclean, reaching out in faith to the One whose holiness is stronger than our defilement, and going away whole. No affliction is too long, no uncleanness too deep, for the touch of Jesus to heal.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter closes by naming its whole purpose: "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." Here is the reason behind all the detail. God had come to dwell among His people, His tabernacle set in the very midst of the camp. But He is holy, and unholiness cannot survive in His presence. For an unclean person to press into the sanctuary was to bring death upon himself and to profane the dwelling of God. So the laws of cleanness were a mercy, a way of keeping a defiled people and a holy God together without ruin. The uncleanness had to be dealt with, not because God wished to keep His people at a distance, but precisely because He wished to dwell in their midst.

Gospel Focus

The purpose statement lifts the whole chapter into the light of the gospel. God's concern was that His unclean people not defile "my tabernacle that is among them"; He wanted to dwell in their midst, and holiness was the condition of that nearness. This is the great tension the whole Bible resolves in Christ: how can a holy God dwell with an unclean people? Under the old covenant, endless washings kept the uncleanness at bay but never removed it. In the new covenant, the blood of Jesus does what the water only pictured, purging the conscience and making us truly clean, so that God no longer dwells merely among His people but within them. The body, which in Leviticus was a source of defilement, becomes in the gospel a holy place: "your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you" (1 Corinthians 6:19). What Leviticus longed for, God dwelling with a clean people, Christ has accomplished. And so Scripture calls us, "let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 7:1), not to earn His presence, but because His presence now dwells in us.