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Leviticus
Chapter Twelve
Leviticus 12
Chapter Contents
Ceremonial purification.
After the laws concerning clean and unclean food
come
the laws concerning clean and unclean persons. Man imparts his depraved nature
to his offspring
so that
excepting as the atonement of Christ and the
sanctification of the Spirit prevent
the original blessing
"Increase and
multiply
" Genesis 1:28
is become to the fallen race a
direful curse
and communicates sin and misery. Let those women who have
received mercy from God in child-bearing
with all thankfulness own God's
goodness to them; and this shall please the Lord better than sacrifices.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Leviticus》
Leviticus 12
Verse 1
And the LORD spake unto Moses
saying
From uncleanness contracted by the touching
or eating of external things
he now comes to that uncleanness which ariseth
from ourselves.
Verse 2
Speak unto the children of Israel
saying
If
a woman have conceived seed
and born a man child: then she shall be unclean
seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she
be unclean.
Seven days —
Not for any filthiness which was either in the conception
or in bringing
forth
but to signify the universal and deep pollution of man's nature
even
from the birth
and from the conception. Seven days or thereabouts
nature is
employed in the purgation of most women.
Her infirmity —
Her monthly infirmity. And it may note an agreement therewith not only in the
time
Leviticus 15:19
but in the degree of
uncleanness.
Verse 4
[4] And
she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days;
she shall touch no hallowed thing
nor come into the sanctuary
until the days
of her purifying be fulfilled.
In the blood of her purifying — In her polluted and separated estate; for the word blood or bloods
signifies both guilt
and uncleanness
as here and elsewhere. And it is called
the blood of her purifying
because by the expulsion or purgation of that
blood
which is done by degrees
she is purified.
No hallowed thing —
She shall not eat any part of the peace-offerings which she or her husband
offered
which otherwise she might have done; and
if she be a priest's wife
she shall not eat any of the tythes or first fruits
or part of the hallowed
meats
which at other times she together with her husband might eat.
Verse 5
[5] But
if she bear a maid child
then she shall be unclean two weeks
as in her
separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and
six days.
Threescore and six days — The time in both particulars is double to the former
not so much from
natural causes
as to put an honour upon the sacrament of circumcision
which
being administered to the males
did put an end to that pollution sooner than
otherwise had been.
Verse 6
[6] And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled
for a son
or for a
daughter
she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering
and a
young pigeon
or a turtledove
for a sin offering
unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation
unto the priest:
For a son or a daughter — For the birth of a son
or of a daughter: but the purification was for
herself
as appears from the following verses.
A sin-offering —
Because of her ceremonial uncleanness
which required a ceremonial expiation.
Verse 8
[8] And
if she be not able to bring a lamb
then she shall bring two turtles
or two
young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering
and the other for a sin
offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for her
and she shall be
clean.
The morality of this law obliges women who
have received mercies from God in child-bearing
with all thankfulness to
acknowledge his goodness to them
owning themselves unworthy of it
and (which
is the best purification) to continue in faith
and love
and holiness
with
sobriety.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on
Leviticus》
12 Chapter 12
Verses 1-8
She shall Be unclean.
Birth-sin and its developments
The theme of the chapter is the same as that of the one preceding
and the one following. The subject is sin
portrayed by symbols. In the
division of the animals into clean and unclean we had the nature of sin in its
general character and outward manifestations. It is a brutalisation of
humanity. It has its type in all sorts of savage
noxious
vile
annoying
creatures. But this chapter presents another and still more affecting phase of
man’s corruption. Surveying those masses of sin and vileness which hang about our
world
the question arises
Whence comes it? How are we to account for it? It
is useless to attribute it to errors in the structure of society
for society
itself is the mere aggregate of human life
feelings
opinions
intercourse
agreement
and doings. It is man that corrupts society
and not society that
corrupts man. The one may react very powerfully upon the other
but the errors
and corruptions in both must have a common source. What is that seat?
Penetrating to the moral signification of this chapter
we have the true
answer. Sin is not only a grovelling brutality assumed or taken upon a man from
without. It is a manifestation which comes from within. It is a corruption
which cleaves to the nature
mingles with the very transmissions of life
and
taints the vital forces as they descend from parent to child
from generation
to generation. We are unclean
not only practically and by contact with a bad
world
but innately. We were conceived in sin; we were shapen in iniquity. And
it is just this that forms the real subject of this chapter. It is the type of
the source and seat of human vileness. The uncleanness here spoken of is no
more a real uncleanness than that attributed to certain animals in the
preceding chapter. The whole regulation is ceremonial
and not at all binding
upon us. It is an arbitrary law
made only for the time then present
as a
figure of spiritual truths. Its great significance lies in its typical nature.
And a more vivid and impressive picture can hardly be conceived. It imposes a
special legal disability upon woman
and so connects with the fact that “the
woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). It is a vivid
remembrancer of the occurrences in Eden. It tells us that we all have come of
sinful mothers. It portrays defilement as the state in which we receive our
being; for “who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one” (Job 14:4). You may plant a good seed
and
surround it with all the conditions necessary to a goodly plant; but it may put
forth so eccentrically
or meet with some mishap in the incipient stages of its
development
in consequence of which all its subsequent growth will be marred
and all its fruits give evidence of the adversities that befell it in the
beginning. You may open a pure fountain
giving forth nothing but pure
good
water; yet the issuing stream may touch upon poison and take up turbid
corn-mixtures at its first departure from its source
and so carry and show
pollution whithersoever it goes. And so it has been with humanity. It was
created pure and good
but by that power of free choice which necessarily
belongs to a moral being some of its first movements were eccentric and
detrimental to its original qualities. It absorbed vileness at its very
beginning; and hence all its subsequent develop-merits have upon them the taint
of that first mishap and contagion. It is worse in some lines than in others.
The operations of Divine grace in the parent doubtless help to enfeeble it in
the child. Now it is just to this universal taint of human nature
derived from
the defection of Adam
that the whole outgrowth of this world’s iniquity is to
be traced. By virtue of our relation to an infected parentage we come into the
world with more or less affinity for evil. The presentation of the objects to
which this proclivity leans awakens those biases into activity. This awakening
of the power of lust is what we call temptation. There is an innate taint or
bias
the presentation to which of the objects of evil desire involuntarily
excites lust; and from this has flown out the flood of evil which has deluged
all the earth. (J. A. Seiss
D. D.)
In the eighth day the
flesh . . . shall be circumcised.
The ordinance of circumcision
Although the rite of circumcision here receives a new and special
sanction
it had been appointed long before by God as the sign of His covenant
with Abraham (Genesis 17:10-14). Nor was it
probably
even then a new thing. That the ancient Egyptians practised it is well known;
so also did the Arabs and Phoenicians; in fact
the custom has been very extensively
observed
not only by nations with
whom the Israelites came in contact
but by others who have not had
in
historic times
connection with any civilised peoples
as
e.g.
the
Congo negroes and certain
Indian tribes in South America. The fundamental idea connected with
circumcision by most of the peoples who have practised it appears to have been
physical purification; indeed
the Arabs call it by the name tatur
which
has this precise meaning. And it deserves to be noticed that for this idea
regarding circumcision there is so much reason in fact that high medical
authorities have attributed to it a real hygienic value
especially in warm
climates. No one need feel any difficulty in supposing that this common
conception attached to the rite also in the minds of the Hebrews. Rather all
the more fitting it was
if there was a basis in fact for this familiar
opinion
that God should thus have taken a ceremony already known to the
surrounding peoples
and in itself of a wholesome physical effect
and constituted
it for Abraham and his seed a symbol of an analogous spiritual fact
namely
the purification of sin at its fountain-head
the cleansing of the evil nature
with which we all are born. When the Hebrew infant was circumcised it was an
outward sign and seal of the covenant of God with Abraham and with his seed to
be a God to him and to his seed after him; and it signified further that this
covenant of God was to be carried out and made effectual only through the
putting away of the flesh
the corrupt nature with which we are born
and of
all that belongs to it
in order that
thus circumcised with the circumcision
of the heart
every child of Abraham might indeed be an Israelite in whom there
should be no guile. And the law commands
in accord with the original command
to Abraham
that the circumcision should take place on the eighth day. This is
the more noticeable
that among other nations which practised or still practise
the rite the time is different. The Egyptians circumcised their sons between the
sixth and tenth years
the modern Mohammedans between the twelfth and
fourteenth. What is the significance of this eighth day? In the first place
it
is easy to see that we have in this direction a provision of God’s mercy; for
if delayed beyond infancy or early childhood
as among many other peoples
the
operation is much more serious
and may even involve some danger
while in so
early infancy it is comparatively trifling
and attended with no risk. Further
by the administration of circumcision at the very opening of life it is
suggested that in the Divine ideal the grace which was signified thereby
of
the cleansing of nature
was to be bestowed upon the child
not first at a late
period of life
but from its very beginning
thus anticipating the earliest
awakening of the principle of inborn sin. But the question still remains
Why
was the eighth day selected
and not rather
e.g.
the sixth or seventh
which weald have no less perfectly represented these ideas? The answer is to be
found in the symbolic significance of the eighth day. As the old creation was
completed in six days
with a following Sabbath of rest
so that six is ever
the number of the old creation
as under imperfection and sin
the eighth day
the first of a new week
everywhere in Scripture appears as the number symbolic
of the new creation
in which all things shall be restored in the great
redemption through the Second Adam. The thought finds its fullest expression in
the resurrection of Christ
as the Firstborn from the dead
the Beginning and
the Lord of the new creation
who in His resurrection body manifested the
firstfruits in physical life of the new creation
rising from the dead on the
first
or
in other words
the day after the seventh
the eighth day. (S. H.
Kellogg
D. D.)
Her purifying.--Purification after child-birth
The teaching of this law is twofold: it concerns
first
the woman
and
secondly
the child which she bears. As regards the woman
it
emphasises the fact that
because “first in the transgression
” she is under
special pains and penalties in virtue of her sex. The capacity of motherhood
which is her crown and glory
though still a precious privilege
has yet been
made
because of sin
an inevitable instrument of pain
and that because of her
relation to the first sin. We are thus reminded that the specific curse
denounced against the woman (Genesis 3:16) is no dead letter
but a
fact. No doubt the conception is one which raises difficulties which in
themselves are great
and to modern thought are greater than ever.
Nevertheless
the fact abides unaltered that even to this day woman is under
special pains and disabilities inseparably connected with her power of
motherhood. But why should all the daughters of Eve suffer because of her sin?
Where is the justice in such an ordinance? A question this is to which we
cannot yet give any satisfactory answer. But it does not follow that because in
any proposition there are difficulties which at present we are unable to solve
therefore the proposition is false. And
further
it is important to observe
that this law
under which womanhood abides
is after all only a special case
under that law of the Divine government by which the iniquities of the fathers
are visited upon the children. It is most certainly a law which
to our
apprehension
suggests great moral difficulties
even to the most reverent
spirits; but it is no less certainly a law which represents a conspicuous and
tremendous fact
which is illustrated
e.g.
in the family of every
drunkard in the world. And it is well worth observing that while the ceremonial
law
which was specially intended to keep this fact before the mind and the
conscience
is abrogated
tile fact that woman is stiff under certain
Divinely-imposed disabilities because of that first sin is reaffirmed in the
New Testament
and is by apostolic authority applied in the administration of
Church government (1 Timothy 2:12-13). But
in the
second place
we may also derive abiding instruction from this law concerning
the child which is of man begotten and of woman born. It teaches us that not
only has the curse thus fallen on the woman
but that
because she is herself a
sinful creature
she can only bring forth another sinful creature like herself;
and if a daughter
then a daughter inheriting all her own peculiar infirmities
and disabilities. The law
as regards both mother and child
expresses in the
language of symbolism those words of David in his penitential confession (Psalms 51:5). Men may contemptuously call
this “theology
” or even rail at it as “Calvinism”; but it is more than theology
more than Calvinism; it is a fact
to which until this present
time history has seen but one exception
even that mysterious Son of the
Virgin
who claimed
however
to be no mere man
but the Christ
the Son of the
Blessed! And yet many
who surely can think but superficially upon the solemn
facts of life
still object to this most strenuously
that even the new-born
child should be regarded as in nature sinful and unclean. Difficulty here we
must all admit--difficulty so great that it is hard to overstate it--regarding
the bearing of this fact on the character of the holy and merciful God
who in
the beginning made man; and yet
surely
deeper thought must confess that
herein the Mosaic view of infant nature--a view which is assumed and taught throughout
Holy Scripture--however humbling to our natural pride
is only in strictest
accord with what the admitted principles of the most exact science compel us to
admit. For whenever
in any case
we find all creatures of the same class
doing
under all circumstances
any one thing
we conclude that the reason for
this can only lie in the nature of such creatures
antecedent to any influence
of a tendency to imitation. If
for instance
the ox everywhere and always eats
the green thing of the earth
and not flesh
the reason
we say
is found
simply in the nature of the ox as he comes into being. So when we see all men
everywhere
under all circumstances
as soon as ever they come to the time of
free moral choice
always choosing and committing sin
what can we
conclude--regarding this not as a theological
but merely as a scientific
question--but that man
as he comes into the world
must have a sinful nature?
And this being so
then why must not the law of heredity apply
according to
which
by a law which knows of no exceptions
like ever produces its like?
Least of all
then
should those object to the view of child-nature which is
represented in this law who accept these commonplaces of modern science as
representing facts. Wiser it were to turn attention to the other teaching of
the law
that
notwithstanding these sad and humiliating facts
there is
provision made by God
through the cleansing by grace of the very nature in
which we are born and atonement for the sin which without our fault we inherit
for a complete redemption from all the inherited corruption and guilt. And
especially should Christian parents with joy and thankfulness receive the
manifest teaching of this law
that God our Father offers to parental faith
Himself to take in hand our children
even from the earliest beginning of their
infant days
and
purifying the fountain of their life through “a circumcision
made without hands
” receive the little ones into covenant relation with
Himself
to their eternal salvation. (S. H. Kellogg D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》