Today's readings contain a bunch of unpleasant discussions regarding sores and boils and mildew, oh my. And there is more where this came from! We'll be reading about bodily discharges tomorrow! I'm not able to make a whole lot of sense out of these laws. Clearly, some had practical applications and were intended to prevent the spread of disease to people and property. And in a world before doctors and hospitals, there had to be some means of diagnosing and containing common maladies. The emphasis of each of these laws was on being "clean". Whenever anything happened to make them unclean, they had to be purified. This speaks to the absolute holiness of God and his standards for acceptance. Still, some of the laws, like the one requiring a purification period after childbirth and menstruation, seem odd to me. Those are not contagious conditions, nor are they sinful ones. Why the need for purification? As best I can figure, these laws were given in terms of holiness, not health. He never claims to be instituting these laws for the protection of the people, though we now recognize many of the health benefits of Old Testament regulations. Holiness and health may overlap, but they are not synonymous. There were two situations that caused uncleanness; moral transgression, which caused spiritual uncleanness and required an offering for purification, and ritual uncleanness, which rendered a person ceremonially unclean but required no purification offering. Therefore, whenever the word "unclean" is used, it should not necessarily be read as "sinful".
Tomorrow's reading:Leviticus 14:33-16:34
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Our God is certainly a God of details and a God of understanding and compassion. How kind that provision was made for those who were too poor to offer the larger animals. It reminds me of how Mary offered the "poor" offering after Jesus was born.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it struck me as I read of the waiting period for those cleansed of skin diseases (Lev. 14: 8-10) that they could return to camp, but had to remain outside their tents for 7 days. How difficult and at the same time how joyous to be so close to full reunion with their families---difficult to be unable to complete that reunion fully yet joyous at being so much closer after having to live separately and call out "Unclean! Unclean!." So many things in the Christian life have paradoxes like that---joy and difficulty mingled.
In regards to the hygiene laws a friend of mine recommended reading "None of These Diseases". I haven't read it yet but have been wanting to!
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