Day 32 -- Leviticus 12-14

As we noted before, in the Book of Leviticus uncleanness is a ritual condition, not a moral one. So it is a mistake to equate ritual uncleanness with wickedness—it is much closer to alienation or estrangement from the community. Uncleanness is an awareness that things were not as they should be—strange or abnormal--and laws and rituals of purification are intended to bring persons in that condition back to rightness and normality.
The Old Testament does not know what we Christians call “original sin,” but the concept of ritual uncleanness recognizes that we are often separated from God and from other people by something that we are, rather than by anything that we did. Sin is not always intentional; sometimes it is simply the condition in which we find ourselves.
Chapter 12 of our reading deals with the return of women to normality after childbirth. The uncleanness here, as elsewhere in the Law of Moses, is associated with blood, the source and symbol of life. So the period of a woman’s uncleanness after the birth of a daughter is twice as long as it is for a son, because a female child will herself be a source of blood. It seems strange to us, but the intention of these laws is not to punish women, but rather to bring them back into the life of the community as soon as possible. The issue of blood made them unclean—a sacrifice of blood also restores their ritual cleanness (12:7).
Chapter 13 deals in much the same way with those suffering from infectious—the text uses the word “spreading” (13:52)--skin diseases. Not just sick people, but also sick houses and diseased clothing. Priests, in their role of discerning clean from unclean, function here as public health workers. They are not physicians—though diagnosis is part of their task. They are not in the business of curing a variety of infectious skin diseases and “itches”—all grouped together under the name “leprosy,”—but of protecting the community from ritual uncleanness and further contamination.
The rules of quarantine are harsh by any standard—“The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Exodus 13:45-46).
In a world where a person’s life and meaning was found in kin relationships and in the worship and fellowship of the community, this enforced isolation would have been a living death. But the law also provided for the purification of cured lepers and their reintegration into society, again through the shedding of blood. Even the cedarwood and crimson yarn used in the ritual sprinkling (14:6-8) are meant to suggest the spilling of blood.
The laws and regulations in our reading for today recognize that people living in a fallen world find themselves unintentionally separated from the community by circumstances or diseases over which they have no control. But to those who are alienated, these laws offer grace because through them the LORD opens a way for the afflicted to be reunited with family, with community, and with himself. In other words, the law offers hope.