Published: March 20, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 2 - Part 5 | Scripture: Leviticus 12, 15:19-24
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higher Social treatment respect and position of Women Within that Society we could say Abigail Adams John Adams wife was a
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feminist if you read her writings you know she was she was way ahead of her time in advocating women having the right to vote and hold office and and basically advocating that women were
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were no less intelligent no less capable than their male counterparts and John Adams agreed laughingly because there was no chance that that was ever going to happen in the 18th century um but
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then we can look at other feminists who who like other activist movements do not merely want to write wrongs they
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want to reverse roles they want they don't want equality they want they want revenge is that fair
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I mean I'm not saying they're all like that though that's what I'm trying to say is they're not all like that and I think that's wrong to say that just because you Advocate fair treatment of women that you you are you know a
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militant feminist well no I'm just looking at the scriptures and I don't think we should fear see what happens is that you get the extreme on one side and and how do we respond on the other side well we
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respond in the extreme on the other side and neither one of them is correct neither one of them is biblical but when a feminist Theologian
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whether male or female and I'm going to quote from from both in a moment when they look at Leviticus 12 they have a problem first of all the whole chapter
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is about the uncleanness of a woman after childbirth so why are we picking on a woman a mother but then we have what I'm
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going to conclude to give away the punchline is a somewhat insoluble distinction between the periods of uncleanness If the child is a boy versus
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If the child is a girl and that really ticks some people off that there is a distinction between a male child and a female
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child and that distinction can only mean discrimination and misogyny Fact one I I'm just going to read the
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conclusion of one such um Theologian
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um her article is titled solving the gender problem in Leviticus 12 I will tell you there is no gender problem in Genesis 12 it's quite clear if it's a boy this if it's a girl this
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it's only a problem if we make it a problem okay so she's solving somewhat of a problem of her own making but this is her article and she says that
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um it is clear that in Leviticus there is a division of the Sexes no Sexes no joke actually it's clear in Genesis and exodus Deuteronomy 1
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Corinthians 1 Timothy I mean it's kind of clear throughout the Bible isn't it the Bible makes a distinction between men and women does it
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not okay but that alone and I I have no problem if you want to look up the article and read it but that alone is is is the indictment and the condemnation
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the Judgment against Leviticus because it makes a distinction between the genders that's all it takes she actually does not in this article go
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through and show that the distinction is necessarily pejorative discriminating or in any way more harmful to the
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mother it's just a distinction and there can there can be no distinctions well that in and of itself is also an
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agenda and it's not an Evangelical one so we we have to be careful as you're reading comment Aries or articles or or something again it doesn't necessarily
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often times it's not from a woman um gerstenberger whove I've you've already met in the notes and he's definitely a higher critic liberal but he says
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feminists often and quite justifiably preserve excuse me perceive these Purity
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laws coined specifically for women as potentially discriminatory well he he's kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth first on the one sand he's saying you know they're they're justifiably concerned but then he says on the other
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hand they're potentially discriminatory well the position of many Evangelical feminists in terms and other feminists in terms of Leviticus 12 is not that
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they're potentially they're potentially discriminatory they are discriminatory another quote that g Berger actually um puts in his
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commentary from a German by the name of Monica fander uh he I I looked her up um she has a web page she's contemporary she has a web page um she is a geomancer
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theologian I don't know I would say it had something to do with with Gia and Mother Earth Mother Earth and natural uh um forces it's Wich it's a form of Witchcraft yeah but she's a
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she's a witch Theologian she's I'm not a witch I'm your wife no you are um I looked at up I thought okay
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gerstenberger is quoting a geomancer this is good sometimes I get these commentaries just to give myself a laugh so fander so fander writes this negative
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endowment of the concept of purity one hostile to women evinces a tendency to correlate impurity and femininity the onset of such a
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development can already be found in Leviticus 12 Leviticus 12 1-8 impurity and see this what they're doing they're saying there is a connection between femininity and
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impurity I don't know what she does with Leviticus 15 where the majority of it at least the beginning of it is talking about male
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discharge and the condition and the um uh the purification ritual um which is actually exactly the same as for a woman's menstrual cycle or
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uh uncontrolled bleeding they're exactly the same which shouldn't even mention that that does even show up as far as I could tell so we can't have the thing is we can't have any distinct
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iction but we're faced with distinction in the in the Bible so that brings back the question is god making a pejorative distinction
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between men and women or is simply God a
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misogynist for the man with a seminal discharge as for a woman with a vaginal discharge pardon me
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although there is no difference between male or female except in Leviticus 12 where the period of purification for a female child is twice that for a male
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child okay so that's right there that's that's you know there it is if you look for example at Leviticus 13 and 14 or if you look at the Nazarite vow in
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number six which is again actually makes the Nazarite on on par in Holiness with the high priest now he's not allowed to
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go into the holy holies or even go to the altar but he's also not allowed to even look upon a corpse even if it's his father or mother same provision okay but
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number six starts out by saying if any man or woman takes a Nazarite vow okay and you look at all these other ones you find out that there's no
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distinction in what they bring that a woman was absolutely free and I'm going to kind of again give another punch list punchline away but at the end of chapter 12 it's the woman who brings the
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sacrifice to the tent of meeting not her husband she brings it okay so I mean if you look close enough you got to realize that you're making a mountain out of a
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mohill there is one issue to deal with why the distinction between a male child and a female child
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yeah and 15 for a female 15 for a female it's half all right now I don't know what they're complaining about for a female daughter they get twice the time off and half the
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fee how what's pajor of about this now it's a that's one that okay I'm being factious obviously but it's twice the time off and half the valuation but of course
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a feminist looks at why is a daughter worthless less than a son well beer reasons probably we're not really going into that because that's not part of what we're reading but it is it's all
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kind of up a piece the scripture makes distinction between the Sexes is that pejorative is that discriminatory is it
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misogynistic when an Evangelical feminist would say no God is Not misogynistic but he didn't write
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this the all male Cadre of priests wrote it and they are
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misogynistic you can't do that and call yourself Evangelical as soon as you read that and someone I mean I don't mind listening a
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reading a woman who's struggling with this Distinction on the valuation or on the purification period perod between a male child and a female child fine it's in the scripture wrestle with it see if
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you can come up with something but to blame it on the priests is to deny the inspiration of scripture and at that point you're not
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an Evangelical feminist you're just a feminist okay I don't care what you call yourself at that point you're not in that camp you you don't you don't earn
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that title Evangelical because you're solving the problem you're cutting your gordian knot by saying well no no no God loves women in fact some of them go so far God is a woman um yeah that's kind
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of really popular too but uh you're saying no we're not blaming God on this we're that's the
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right well Paul was just a a creature of his culture um or he you know you could go into some Freudian analysis of Paul and why he was so misogynistic in his writings um yeah that's exactly right if
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you if you take the position that that of the higher criticism or the documentary hypothesis that this is a Priestly document that Not only was Priestly it was politically oriented by
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the postexilic Priestly cast who were trying to bring order and control to The Returned Exiles so that what happened 70 years earlier wouldn't happen again and
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that and you can look at the history of both Judaism and Christianity unfortunately you never find any example of actual misogyny do you no it's
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rampant in in both religions okay um as I've mentioned I mentioned a week or or the week before that uh with regard to the court of
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women that wasn't in the Tabernacle back off you know herod's Temple was was representative of cultural prejudices
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and discrimination that aren't in the scripture herod's Temple was not built according to the pattern given on the mount and the Shina never came there never did God inhabit that building
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either when it was built in the days of zerubbabel or when Herod refurbished it nope never showed up so that should tell us something about all our little pictures and our Bibles and everything
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in terms of the what the temple looked like now that's not Solomon's Temple and that's not the Tabernacle that's herod's Temple which represents cultural standards and Norms
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that have nothing to do with what scripture reveals so yeah we can if you are a feminist you can certainly point to history and say well look here there's an example there's an example
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there Prejudice oppression absolutely I we still have it today
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but that's not our source that's not the source of truth that's the error and the scripture is a source that shows us the error that we then should then should fix but there is still a distinction
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between the between the Sexes that distinction does not only does not need to be oppressive and and prejudicial it must not be oppressive or
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prejudicial but you don't avoid oppression and Prejudice by getting rid of the of the distinction that does that make sense I mean even in the New Testament the distinction is still
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there and yet we're told that in Christ there is neither male nor female okay so equality and yet distinction so we have to look at Leviticus 12 if we're
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Evangelical we have to come to Leviticus 12 with that mindset not with either the um patriarchal misogynistic mindset of men
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versus women and women of course they were the first to eat the apple and they that caused all the trouble ever s that is no better than the woman saying that
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any distinction is oppressive they're both wrong even when we're looking at something that may be insoluble and that is the difference in purification or valuation of a male child versus a
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female child what's most important is the attitude with which we do our investigation what are we trying to prove are we trying to prove something here are we trying to prove that men are
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worth more to God than women that there is an inherent essential difference between the Sexes or why we trying to prove the opposite that there's no distinction in any distinction is
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oppressive and hateful well either approach will never properly interpret the scripture in front of you so you can't you can't take refuge
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as many have done in a conservative male or male oriented patriarchy that blames women
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fundamentally for sin entering the world when Paul in Romans 5 and then again in 1 Timothy 6 I think it is
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flatly denies that sin came through Eve it's Eve it's Adam it all came through Adam okay so we don't we can't even we don't
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even leg to stand on there if we try to blame everything on Eve so we have to look at Ro Leviticus 12 with I I hate to say open mind um but
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an Evangelical mind a mind that says this is God's word and therefore we're not going to try to acculturate it one way or the other
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uh Yes actually that is an argument um and and not a very strong one but it's an argument for the shortened initial Purity period which is 14 days for a female child but seven for a
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male okay so yes but that that doesn't explain while the where why the subsequent period of time is still
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double for the female child than for the male well yes the numbers are there the numbers add up um we'll talk about that
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but there's there there are combinations of sevens and 40s okay so oh let's just do that the male child is seven days and then 33 40
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okay female child is 14 days and then 66 80 it's double and the valuation is one half so at least the math is easy
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because you know we hate fractions okay um we just twice or half we can do that but that doesn't NE and and of course circumcision is some have used
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that but that doesn't really solve the problem um so we we'll get into that hopefully and and there's more about that in the notes but that's definitely
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one of the um um reasons okay so I I just want to lay that out there that um when when you look at scripture from a
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purely modern uh egalitarian perspective which I would argue and have argued that that egalitarianism is largely due to the Gospel of Jesus
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Christ The View that we do have in our society being so again egalitarian among the Sexes is a product of the gospel and
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it's not something that is universal in the world it's certainly not something that you find in
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Islam right and it's not something you find in in many other cultures that are still animistic or or what we would biblically call I guess Pagan that you don't have this egalitarian societ
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so when we're reading the Old Testament I mean we still have that almost um subliminal idea that the god of the Old
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Testament was in a Perpetual bad mood you know and and really just didn't like people and certainly didn't like
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women and that has been fostered sadly by many Christian preachers and writers over the centuries over the Millennia um and and including uh rabbis too now
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you can't let the Jews off the hook on that one and i' in fact I've got some really good quotes some juicy Rabbi quotes here uh that I hope to get to tonight um but yeah they're they're not
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um yeah they're they're not all that uh Progressive in their thought e either so we're approaching uh L Leviticus 12 we
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have to remain Evangelical at the at the fundamental point at which all source of knowledge about any of this must come
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and that is inspired Revelation called scripture but being honest with what we're dealing with we also acknowledge that what um her name is
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Sarah Whit here but what she says is correct there is a distinction among the Sexes that that that is she presents that as an astounding discovery of her
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own EX own EX Jesus I know I fell back out of my chair and I read that I never realized that the Bible makes a distinction among the
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Sexes well we're in a book of distinctions in fact we're in a section of distinctions that has a heading in Leviticus 10: 10 where God says to Aaron
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and with him the whole priesthood you will learn to make a distinction and so distinctions are all over the place here but as we've also we've talked about Leviticus 11 there
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was nothing inherently wrong with a camel or a horse or a pig okay the distinction was not moral nor was it
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essential it was ritual okay so um we have to keep that in mind because there are a lot of forces in our world a lot of voices in
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our world that want us to conclude very unang angelical conclusions and that is there is misogyny in the Bible and
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therefore there is enmity oppression and hatred in the Bible not not just historically but actually dogmatically and and again we would be
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naive not to think or realize that too often the church has adopted that view and Christians have adopted that view that there is an essential distinction
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between men between men women and I would say that you don't even have to be in Christ to deny that principle or that
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contention that there is an essential distinction between men and women there isn't I mean with all the biological knowledge that we have now and how far
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women have advanced in just about every Walk of Walk of Life we ought to be able to conclude that even outside of Christ there's just like There's no distinction
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between a black white yellow you know there's no distinction among ethnicities no essential distinction there's also no essential distinction between a male and
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a female we ought to know that by now shouldn't we I mean we ought to know you know being a modern scientific Society such as we are where is the scientific
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basis for any type of prejudice within the human race it isn't there but then you go to the scripture and you're still going to it with a a prejudicial mindset
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or a priori concerning a distinction between men and women and I just I just have a problem with it but it's it's assumed and and I'll bring it home
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okay the trauma that we went through last year for the beginning of last
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year was Justified on the Bas of slippery slope that if we allowed women to pray which by the way we weren't
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doing we were simply allowing the head whether it's father or wife husband to determine whether or not the wom should
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pray but where's that going to lead where you allow women to pray where is that going to lead
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no that's far too positive a thought although I will say Amen okay I have I have notes in my Bible with with little notes saying Elizabeth Johnson okay yeah well the primary fear is that
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they're going to have women Elders that that was what was voiced that that's where you're headed okay like no I don't even care if Siri tell tells me to go there I'm not going there you know I
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don't know what you're talking about why why there's some type of direct connection and inevitable progression or digression that if you if you the least bit agree that that there is equality in
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Christ between the Sexes you must of necessity without any resistance eventually end up with women Elders what that's fear that's just fear
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talking that's that's not theology what that huh yeah what's he doing here turn him okay okay it sounded like it all right
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all right so let's get into the text okay first of all let's set let's set things in a a broader context of the Purity laws Leviticus 11 through 15 and
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try to uh I didn't write anything down here sorry about that but the answer is no well the the the answer for many is no but the
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priests were okay so there's the evasion that I wanted to kind of bring out is that we can get around blaming God for this by assigning all these scriptures to just human sources but as as I wanted
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to I pointed out once you do that you don't get this anymore okay you you don't you don't you don't deserve that
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label anymore sad thing is so many people use it that don't deserve it that it's losing its meaning too like all labels do okay so we'll have to have a new one someday all right so let's look
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at the
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um artificial because we're we're using chapter divisions of which there were none in the original the original documents but using the chapter divisions you as we've often talked
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about sometimes you find the chapter division is in a good place sometimes you realize that's not a good place to divide the thought and and you kind of correct it in your own mind but we have
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that um I I would not in the in the least suggest that the chapter divisions are inspired but we have them okay so we look at Leviticus 11
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and we saw that Leviticus 11 is patterned after Genesis 1 the creation of the living beings in the three spheres of the created order the water the land and the
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air okay so we have uh the created animals per Genesis whoops
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one so Leviticus 11 takes care of that realm and the relationship kind of overarching all of this as we've talked about before you have two relationships going on here the relationship of God with his
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people dwelling with his people and his people dwelling in the presence of God so so that reciprocal concept of God God
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remaining in the midst of his people that's one Paradigm one challenging issue how's is going to come off but also how will an Unholy people
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live as the people of a holy God in his presence because that is the Tabernacle now the Tabernacle is the shikina it is
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the presence of a holy God he's now living in the midst of his people and he's doing it um in a in a real sense
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but also a prophetic sense because we saw in the earlier section of Leviticus in spite of the fact that there is this now this new communion with God dwelling
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in the midst of his people there are still barriers of Separation aren't there physical there physical barriers the veils between the different
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and then social barriers the Levites and then the arones and then the high priest so that even even there we realize this
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isn't the ultimate Union or communion between God and his people but nonetheless it's far different than anybody's experienced before since since Eden okay this is the closest we've
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gotten to God and God to us since he walked in the garden with Adam all right so we see it that way and so now when we get into the Purity well that's really kind of the the the the circulation
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system now of this relationship clean and unclean holy and profane we looked at those distinctions and that's what this section of scripture is all about the latter
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section of Leviticus is going to be how do the people of God live among themselves in a manner that gives honor and glory to The God Who dwells in their
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midst that's called the Holiness code and and as you read you know you're you're going to do this with your uh fellow countrymen because I the Lord am
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Holy you know it just keeps repeating you're doing this horizontally with one another or not doing that because I the Lord am Holy so you have the you have the vertical
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downward but you have the vertical upward
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okay and then you have the horizontal how does God people how do God's people God's people dwell within Community that's kind of Leviticus and again I think it's just so
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significant and I've said this so many times but this is 30 days it's the only chronologically deiminated delim or deled or whatever the word is
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demarcated section of the pentet took 30 days and God through uh Moses is telling us how do we how do we do this how do we maintain this okay so we start out by
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saying okay we're going back to creation and here are all the animals and just as I did in creation of all the trees you may eat except one but now you're a
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fallen people and everyone Everybody Eats everything so now I'm going to say out of all the animals you can only eat a few all right so we made that
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connection between Genesis 2 so but we're just dealing with animals now soon as we get to Leviticus 12 we're dealing with people okay so um I'm gonna I'm
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going to do it a little bit this way
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now and it's it's part of Genesis 1 where God commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth but we're going into Genesis 3 where the fall and introduction of
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sin has messed that all up so that even in obeying God's commandment his his creation
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mandate were mandate were impure okay even doing what God says we're says we're impure because of what has happened to
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our nature now we're not Unholy we're just unclean and the provision is being made here to restore cleanness
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so it's not you lost your salvation because you had a child no you are unclean because the bodily process that was supposed to be
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blessed has been corrupted and I have no idea what it all would have looked like if Adam had not sinned I mean we have no concept of what all of it would have looked like we can
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we can infer of course that that child birth would be painless right I mean I I can't say I would venture to say that there would not be
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the the discharge of blood so that's an issue but does everybody agree that things changed when
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Adam fell that what happens after that is universally different than it would have been if Adam had not Fallen okay now God knows this so that
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everything we do is in some way tainted
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just right destruction that's that's our Mo yeah we have no way of knowing you I I I still remember the little diddy if Moses if Noah was so wise why did he
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save those two flies Okay I mean yeah there's a lot in the world right not just the carnivorous animals that we can see in scripture
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there seems to have been a change at the flood okay in the nature of of animals and the relationship between humans and animals but they're you know there there are what about viruses what about you
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know the bacteria what what is where well all of that the only thing we can say is that sin has corrupted the entire created order and so there's
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nothing this is a part of total depravity it's not just man but as Paul says in Romans 8 all of creation has been corrupted by sin and so we can't
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look at even uh something like childb birth as as you know obviously we're supposed to have children and yet it's
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clean it is yes yes was noay right now there's Decay every month yeah yep so every month there's a reminder of what you have been delivered from ultimately
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yeah but it was as I said every meal reminded the Israelite that he was a separated people okay and and every
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month the woman and every nine months you know and the male as well I mean there are these reminders that things aren't as they should be even though God
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is dwelling in our midst and the shikina is in the Tabernacle and we have the law and we have the mediatory priesthood it's not what it was supposed to be
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well uh yeah because if you look at this is what I'm doing here because Genesis 12 is coupled with genes I'm sorry Leviticus 12 is coupled with Leviticus 15 okay 12 is most important because
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child birth is a creation mandate all right that's what Adam and Eve were told to do and so it it sets up the the
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initial Paradigm once again we're not talking about Sin here because we're talking about something that man is commanded or women commanded to do is to multiply now we
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could get in uh you know it it is it must be implied from scripture in general that this is childbirth within marriage that they we're not talking about because the penalty for
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fornication was death all right so that's that's rule out you don't you know I just had a child the priest says who's the husband I don't know okay well seven days and then
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no you know the F no this is this is a different Paradigm now this isn't ritual impurity this is now moral impurity all right so we're not you know don't mix
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those two that's that's very important we're still solidly within ritual impurity not moral the woman did not sin by having a
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child that that ought to be obvious okay but when you look at Leviticus 12 and Leviticus 15 you
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realize that all of the discharges are of the
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organs okay now I'm going to jump ahead because there's the argument um by mamades who was a doctor as well as a Jewish rabbi Jewish rabbi that the reason for the menstrual
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impurity and the childbirth impurity and and the seminal discharge is because they're disgusting well frankly so is a snotty nose I'm like I I'm run from
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those you find me a bath of lie okay I mean seriously when they get the big bubble coming out is that not disgusting I mean you all have it now you're with it but I I've been it's been years so when I see it I'm like you
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know right someone sneezes that's disgusting you know they don't put you know like you know 500 something miles an hour it's flying out there that's
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disgusting but it's not unclean it's not unclean right you see someone with spitt in their beard that's disgusting it's not unclean see these discharges are not
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not unclean the only unclean ones are the reproductive organs what would that be well where was the whole thing messed up Genesis 3 does that make sense yeah
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you can you can see in Leviticus 12:5 that the things that render a man or a woman unclean have to do with the reproductive system and so you go back to where that was all messed up and
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that's the fall now there's no direct connection like there is between the animals of the land and of the sea and of the air there it's more of an illusion or even an echo of Genesis 3
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but what we're we know that having a child or having a period is not a sin but we ought to know that sin has
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impacted the reproductive system of the woman and and what what is the monthly cycle well it's the it's the death
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of an egg now I'm not the biologist so if I'm wrong you know correct me but that's my understanding of it right or a seminal discharge that is that is
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not productive of fertilization is as you said it is a waste of life it is in a sense death okay so we are talking
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about life and death here as we've kind of alluded to before it is a matter of life and death and blood is going to be at the center of it but the the only two fluids that we find to be um defiling
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are blood and seminal discharge and both of them vaginal blood because you know if you cut yourself shaving you know women you shaving your leg you cut your are you you have a
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discharge of blood is that unclean not according to scripture right okay so it it's not just the issuing of blood it's vaginal blood
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or seminal or seminal discharge that that tells us something okay so Leviticus 12 and
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um Leviticus 15 where you
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have a more General treatise of these two okay in between you have the what is known as the law of leprosy again to give away next week's
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um punchline it's not the leprosy as we understand leprosy it it and I hope to be able to show you that next week but um that that
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is actually almost a universal conclusion among uh biblical Scholars and even Rabin scholar SCH from the Middle Ages like mamones is that there
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was a an evolution of a word as it went from the Hebrew into the Greek where the Hebrew word became the Greek word
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Greek word Lea and then that word later on got Associated through an Arabic word with
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elephantitis and then as it moved into the Middle Ages it became representative of what we now call Hansen's disease I'm getting ahead of myself but that's not the Biblical word and we we'll look at that next week so what we're dealing
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with here then
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um related but they are related in the sense that we're we're now dealing with the the human body in its relationship to dwelling in
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the presence of a holy God but also in the relationship that we've already looked at and that is the Holiness or the cleanness of the community we remember the normal situation was clean
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it was the unusual usual situation to be unclean so the things that we're reading in these chapters were not how the the Israelites became clean this is not a
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Works righteousness whereby they earn God's favor this is all predicated on God having all already called them and washed them in a sense through the
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waters of The Exodus they are as Jesus said of his disciples already disciples already clean these are the circumstances by which that cleanness can be lost and
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then also how it can be restored in numbers 19 we find out that the man who refuses to be purified of corpse
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uncleanness that would be just touching a corpse either on purpose because you're bearing the body to the Grave or inadvertently there's a whole process by
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which you must be cleansed if you refuse to be cleansed you will be cut off from your people your people so even though this has nothing to do then it becomes moral impurity at that
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point because you're rebellious it goes from ritual impurity to moral impurity and that's it so this is very serious stuff because of what we were talking about before we have a community to
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maintain and one that as as numbers talks about your your sin has made a separation between you and God and so we're we're dealing with a a reality
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that completely argues against this ideality of God dwelling with his people and his people dwelling with God okay who can who can Ascend to the Holy Hill
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all right your eyes are too pure even to look upon wickedness so it's like okay we got to realize that what we're talking about is two diametrically opposed and incompatible positions and
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yet God has brought them together but he isn't just winking at sin saying no that's okay I was just not I was kind of being a little bit bad mood you know no his Holiness is real
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he's he's a cons consuming fire and we see that in Leviticus 10 when naab and Abu kind of play their own game and the fire leaps out and consumes them so we
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we need to keep that almost that that mental image of ananas and saf naab and Abu we should keep that in our minds all not not that we fear coming before God
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but that we not denigrate that that interaction to the point where we fail to realize that he is a holy God okay so the structure of these chapters is very important
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we're coming here but even in the opening verses of Leviticus 12 Moses refers to Leviticus
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15 he says that she will be unclean as in the days of her cycle and that's actually Leviticus 15
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so from a standpoint of systematics he's going about it wrong so let me let me read that um yeah verse two speak to the sons of Israel saying on once once again
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this Sons is clearly a generic term here because this is about the woman okay speak to the sons of Israel saying when a woman gives birth and bears a male
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child then shall she shall be unclean for seven days as in the days of her menstruation she B shall be unclean well that takes you to Leviticus
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15 where after talking about the male discharge first he finally gets to oh where is it um well 19 okay thank you when a
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woman has a discharge if a discharge in her body is blood she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days and who okay so all right it's a it's a
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forward reference not a back reference which shows us that the material is being organized in a different
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manner than manner than frequency women have far more menstrual cycles than they have children okay so clearly if you were
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doing this on on a frequency of occurrence you would have flipped the two but God doesn't do that because he's establishing something I think again echoing Genesis and saying you need to realize
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that even even though you're fulfilling the creation mandate and that I told you to have children that even that is impure and it is it is
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defiling because of sin not your sin but sin in general and then uh so we'll get you know keep this bigger picture in mind as we go through these chapters um
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because I think the order of them the way they're laid out is is by no means arbitrary I think it's very very significant so that's the that's the layout so let's look at um what are we
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dealing with in the chapters 12 and 15 and that is bodily discharge so it goes to the question then um how do I do this let's do this
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defiling why do some bodily discharges render the Israelite unclean well in order to answer that question we have to go back to the discussion that that uh Abe precipitated
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with his question what is the nature of these discharges the human body can body can discharge a lot of stuff
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we we're discharging all the time right um as I referenced earlier some of those discharges are discharges are disgusting some of them are are actually
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associated with with the body's um immunity system like pus right so that's kind of disgusting too so it we can talk
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about bodily discharges in general and then realize that probably the vast majority of possible bodily discharges
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are not are not defiling they do not render the Israelite unclean and there is no process given for their purification the only ones that we have
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blood but not all blood
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discharge but not all only
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um the words Raw yeah there there is a condition there but that condition is associated with a skin Affliction so it it wasn't for example if you got a cut and the cut got
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infected and it built up pus and the doctor oh by the way that's kind of a side note um many scholars for some reason assume that Israel alone among
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all the ancient Nations had no Physicians there's no basis for that assumption now Scholars do that for two
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reasons one reason and they're different one reason is to say that the priest were the Physicians but there's absolutely nothing prescriptive or preventative or even uh prophylactic in
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what's what's written here all the priest did was recognize it and quarantine it and then recognize that it isn't there anymore so come wash okay the priest did not prescribe you didn't
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go to CVX CVS and get something the priest was not at all physician here although he's often called a physician by Old Testament Scholars like
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no and the other one is just to assume that Israel ancient Israel was absolutely completely absolutely completely Neanderthal among all the nations around the Egyptians the Babylonians all of which had Physicians Israel didn't have
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any doctors no they they did have doctors that that's not the point the point this is not medicinal this is ritual this has to do with the relationship between the the people and
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God in the Tabernacle okay so the phys the priest did not become Physicians here in Leviticus 13 and 14
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just because they diagnosed so but the the the discharge there is not so much the wording is not the same it's not really a discharge it's more of a of an
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oozing and yeah it was a visible but most of it really has to do with redness like a like a soore um not even necessarily any fluids
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mentioned in Leviticus 13 okay so the discharges what are actually discharges are either vaginal blood or seminal discharge okay so again as I said
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earlier that tells us something when we realize that there are so many other possible discharges of the human body none of which render the person unclean
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is the the latter the latter discussion in Genesis Leviticus 15 does seem very much to indicate that it's seminal okay because uh because of what follows yes um and
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the specificity of what follows and and I'm I'm certainly not alone there um there there's no uh and also I think
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that taking the overall context I mean there are a number of places where individual versus leave you wondering well what is he talking about but the whole context tells you oh okay he's
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still talking about this realizing that the category of defiling discharges can be limited to
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these two leads to the exegetical conclusion that this has to do with the reproductive this has to do with procreation does that make
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sense no um no I do not think that the intermediate chapters which is why they they do seem to be uh somewhat disjointed but they are united together 13 and 14 are one section but 12 and 15
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are another so there's some parallelism going on here okay almost chastic once again okay but the the Paradigm or the
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um yeah the Paradigm of 13 and 14 is different than that of 12 in fact it's
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it's it's it's different as opposites 12 and 15 are dealing with the fluids of fluids of Life 13 or 14 are dealing with living
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it without considering follows would have
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but only because of but that's because of the discharge not the dis that's not the discharge itself now you're talking about
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contagion and and un and we've talked about contagion and we'll talk more about contagion because uncleanness is generally contagious which is why it must be
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quarantined and even put outside the camp because it is contagious it's not medically contagious again we can't let ourselves go there and think that
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there's some connection between the male discharge and his spit and by spit I don't think what's meant is he's going around spitting on
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people sometimes times we're a little bit juicy when we talk you know and that's that happens and I don't think it's I think it's even the tone of it is
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inadvertent all right um but but again that the contagion is because of the discharge it is not itself the
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discharge so what the scripture is showing is that uncleanness is contagious and so the Purity laws one
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part of the Purity laws is to limit that contagion because of this if it's allowed to just run through like an epidemic of
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uncleanness God will leave some of the
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illust we we don't really yeah but we don't really know what that's that's one of the issues we'll get to in Leviticus 13 is that we frankly don't know what they are like we were talking about we really don't know I didn't get into this in Leviticus 11 but out of the 20 19
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plus bats in Leviticus in the the creatures of the air in Leviticus 11 less than half a dozen have any degree of consistency of interpretation among both
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Jewish and Christian and even just Hebrew Scholars we don't frankly know what the birds are that the passage is talk talking about which means the
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meaning must be they they knew but we