THE UNCLEANNESS OF CHILD
BEARING
Lev 12:1-8
THE reference in Lev 12:2 to the regulations given in Lev 15:19,
as remarked in the preceding chapter, shows us that the author of
these laws regarded the circumstances attending child birth as
falling under the same general category, in a ceremonial and
symbolic aspect, as the law of issues. As a special case, however,
the law concerning child birth presents some very distinctive and
instructive features.
The period during which the mother was regarded as unclean, in the
full comprehension of that term, was seven days, as in the analogous
case mentioned in Lev 15:19, with the remarkable exception, that
when she had borne a daughter this period was doubled. At the
expiration of this period of seven days, her ceremonial uncleanness
was regarded as in so far lessened that the restrictions affecting
the ordinary relations of life, as ordered, Lev 15:19-23, were
removed. She was not, however, yet allowed to touch any hallowed
thing or to come into the sanctuary, until she had fulfilled, from
the time of the birth of the child, if a son, forty days; if a
daughter, twice forty, or eighty days. At the expiration of the
longer period, she was to bring, as in the law concerning the
prolonged issue of {Lev 15:25-30} a burnt offering and a sin
offering unto the door of the tent of meeting, wherewith the priest
was to make an atonement for her; when first she should be accounted
clean, and restored to full covenant privileges. The only difference
from the similar law in chapter 15 is in regard to the burnt
offering commanded, which was larger and more costly, -a lamb,
instead of a turtle dove, or a young pigeon. Still, in the same
spirit of gracious accommodation to the poor which was illustrated
in the general law of the sin offering, it was ordered (Lev 12:8):
"If her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall take two
turtledoves, or two young pigeons; the one for a burnt offering, and
the other for a sin offering." The law then applied, according to
Lev 15:29-30. A gracious provision this was, as all will remember,
of which the mother of our Lord availed herself, {Luk 2:22-24} as
being one of those who were too poor to bring a lamb for a burnt
offering.
To the meaning of these regulations, the key is found in the same
conceptions which we have seen to underlie the law concerning
issues. In the birth of a child, the special original curse against
the woman is regarded by the law as reaching its fullest, most
consummate and significant expression. For the extreme evil of the
state of sin into which the first woman, by that first sin, brought
all womanhood, is seen most of all in this, that now woman, by means
of those powers given her for good and blessing, can bring into the
world only a child of sin. And it is, apparently, because we here
see the operation of this curse in its most conspicuous form, that
the time of her enforced separation from the tabernacle worship is
prolonged to a period either of forty or eighty days.
It has been usual to speak of the time of the mother’s uncleanness,
and subsequent continued exclusion from the tabernacle worship, as
being doubled in the case of the birth of a daughter; but it were,
perhaps, more accurate to regard the normal length of these periods
as being respectively fourteen and eighty days, of which the former
is double of that required in Lev 15:28. This normal period would
then be more properly regarded as shortened by one half in the case
of a male child, in virtue of his circumcision on the eighth day.
THE ORDINANCE OF
CIRCUMCISION
Lev 12:3
"And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be
circumcised."
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. {Gen 17:10-14} Nor was circumcision,
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, for example, 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 fountainhead, the cleansing of the evil
nature with which we all are born. It should be plain enough that it
makes nothing against this as the true interpretation of the rite,
even if that be granted which some have claimed, that it has had, in
some instances, a connection with the phallic worship so common in
the East, or that it has been regarded by some as a sacrificial
ceremony. Only the more noteworthy would it thus appear that the
Hebrews should have held strictly to that view of its significance
which had a solid basis in physical fact, -a fact, moreover, which
made it a peculiarly fitting symbol of the spiritual grace which the
Biblical writers connect with it. For that it was so regarded by
them will not be disputed. In this very book {Lev 26:41} we read of
an "uncircumcised heart"; as also in Deuteronomy, the prophecies of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and other books of Scripture.
All this, as intimating the signification of circumcision as here
enjoined, is further established by the New Testament references. Of
these the most formal is perhaps that in Col 2:10-11, where we read
that believers in Christ, in virtue of their union with Him in whom
the unclean nature has been made clean, are said to be "circumcised
with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the
body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ"; so that Paul
elsewhere writes to the Philippians: {Php 3:3} "We are the
circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."
And that God, in selecting this ancient rite to be the sign of His
covenant in the flesh of Abraham and his seed, {Gen 17:13} had
regard to the deep spiritual meaning which it could so naturally
carry is explicitly declared by the Apostle Paul, {Rom 4:11} who
tells us that this sign of circumcision was "a seal of the
righteousness of faith," even the righteousness and the faith
concerning which, in the previous context, he was arguing; and which
are still, for all men, the one, the ground, and the other, the
condition, of salvation. It is truly strange that, in the presence
of these plain words of the Apostle, any should still cling to the
idea that circumcision had reference only to the covenant with
Israel as a nation, and not, above all, to this profound spiritual
truth which is basic to salvation, whether for the Jew or for the
Gentile.
And so, when the Hebrew infant was circumcised, it signified for him
and for his parents these spiritual realities. 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, for example, circumcised their sons between the sixth and
tenth years, and the modern Mohammedans between the twelfth and
fourteenth year. 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. It was thus signified that before ever
the child knew, or could know, the grace that was seeking to save
him, he was to be taken into covenant relation with God. So even
under the strange form of this ordinance we discover the same mind
that was in Him who said concerning infant children: {Luk 18:16}
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not:
for of such is the kingdom of God." Thus we may well recollect, in
passing, that, although the law has passed away in the Levitical
form, the mind of the Lawgiver concerning the little children of His
people is still the same.
But the question still remains, Why was the eighth day selected, and
not rather, for instance, the sixth or the seventh, which would 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, which is the first day 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 first fruits 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. This gives the key
to the use of the number eight in the Mosaic symbolism. Thus in the
law of the cleansing of the man or the woman that had an issue, the
sacrifices which effectuated their formal deliverance from the curse
under which, through the weakness of their old nature, they had
suffered, were to be offered on the eighth day; {Lev 15:14; Lev
15:29} the priestly cleansing of the leper from the taint of his
living death was also effected on the eighth day; {Lev 14:10} so
also the cleansing of the Nazarite who had been defiled by the dead.
{Num 6:10} So also the holy convocation which closed the feast of
tabernacles or ingathering - the feast which, as we shall see,
typically prefigured the great harvest ofwhich Christ was the First
fruits-was ordained, in like manner, for the eighth day. {Lev 23:36}
With good reason, then, was circumcision ordered for the eighth day,
seeing that what it symbolically signified was precisely this: the
putting off of the flesh with which we are born through the
circumcision of Christ, and therewith the first beginning of a new
and purified nature-a change so profound and radical, and in which
the Divine efficiency is so immediately concerned, that Paul said of
it that if any man was in Christ, in whose circumcision we are
circumcised, {Col 2:11} "there is a new creation". {2Co 5:17,
margin, R.V}
PURIFICATION AFTER CHILD
BIRTH
Lev 12:4-8
"And she shall 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. But if she
bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her
impurity: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying
threescore and six days. 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 tent of
meeting, unto the priest: and he shall offer it before the Lord, and
make atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the fountain
of her blood. This is the law for her that beareth, whether a male
or a female. And if her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall
take two turtledoves, or two young pigeons; the one for a burnt
offering, and the other for a sin offering: and the priest shall
make atonement for her, and she shall be clean."
Until the circumcision of the newborn child, on the eighth day, he
was regarded by the law as ceremonially still in a state of nature,
and therefore as symbolically unclean. For this reason, again, the
mother who had brought him into the world, and whose life was so
intimately connected with his. life, was regarded as unclean also.
Unclean, under analogous circumstances, according to the law of Lev
15:19, she was reckoned doubly unclean in this case, -unclean
because of her issue, and unclean because of her connection with
this child, uncircumcised and unclean. But when the symbolic
cleansing of the child took place by the ordinance of circumcision,
then her uncleanness, so far as occasioned by her immediate relation
to him, came to an end. She was not indeed completely restored; for,
according to the law, in her still continuing condition, it was
impossible that she should be allowed to come into the tabernacle of
the Lord, or touch any hallowed thing; but the ordinance which
admitted her child, admitted her also again to the fellowship of the
covenant people.
The longer period of forty-or, in the case of the birth of a female
child, of twice forty-days must also be explained upon Symbolical
grounds. Some have indeed attempted to account for these periods, as
also for the difference in their length in the two cases, by a
reference to beliefs of the ancients with regard to the physical
condition of the mother during these periods; but such notions of
the ancients are not justified by facts; nor, especially, would they
by any means account for the greatly prolonged period of eighty days
in the case of the female child. It is possible that in the forty,
and twice forty, we may have a reference to the forty weeks during
which the life of the unborn child had been identified with that of
the mother, -a child which, it must be remembered, according to the
uniform Biblical view, was not innocent, but conceived in sin; for
each week of which connection of life, the mother suffered a
judicial exclusion of one, or, in the case of the birth of a
daughter, of two days; the time being doubled in the latter case
with allusion to the double curse which, according to Genesis,
rested upon the woman, as "first in the transgression." But, apart
from this, however difficult it may be to give a satisfactory
explanation of the fact, it is certain that throughout Scripture the
number forty appears to have a symbolic meaning; and one can usually
trace in its application a reference, more or less distinct, to the
conception of trial or testing. Thus for forty days was Moses in the
mount, -a time of testing for Israel, as for him: forty days, the
spies explored the promised land; forty years, Israel was tried in
the wilderness; forty days, abode Elijah in the wilderness; forty
days, also, was our Lord fasting in the wilderness; and forty days,
again, He abode in resurrection life upon the earth.
The forty (or eighty) days ended, the mother was now formally
reinstated in the fulness of her privileges as a daughter of Israel.
The ceremonial, as in the law of issues, consisted in the
presentation of a burnt offering and a sin offering, with the only
variation that, wherever possible, the burnt offering must be a
young lamb, instead of a dove or pigeon; the reason for which
variation is to be found either in the fact that the burnt offering
was to represent not herself alone, but also her child, or,
possibly, as some have suggested, it was because she had been so
much longer excluded from the tabernacle service than in the other
case.
The teaching of this law, then, 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 her
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, as recorded in the book of
Genesis, 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.
Modern theorists, men and women with nineteenth-century notions
concerning politics and education, may persist in ignoring this; but
the fact abides, and cannot be got rid of by passing resolutions in
a mass meeting, or even by Act of Parliament or Congress.
And so, as it is useless to object to facts, it is only left to
object to the Mosaic view of the facts, which connects them with
sin, and, in particular, with the first sin. 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 Jaw of the Divine
government which is announced in the second commandment, 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, for instance, 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, the fact that
woman is still 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. For Paul wrote to Timothy: {1Ti 2:12-13} "I permit not a
woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man For Adam was not
beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into
transgression." Modern theorists, and so-called "reformers" in
Church, State, and society, busy with their social, governmental,
and ecclesiastical. novelties, would do well to heed this apostolic
reminder.
All the more beautiful, as against this dark background of mystery,
is the word of the Apostle which follows, wherein he reminds us
that, through the grace of God, even by means of those very powers
of motherhood on which the curse has so heavily fallen, has come the
redemption of the woman; so that "she shall be saved through the
childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification
with sobriety"; {1Ti 2:15, R.V} seeing that "in Christ Jesus," in
respect of the completeness and freeness of salvation, "there can be
no male and female". {Gal 3:28, R.V}
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: {Psa 51:5} "Behold, I was shapen in
iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." 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
newborn 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
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 of Leviticus, 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, last of all, especially should Christian parents with joy and
thankfulness receive the manifest teaching of this law, -teaching
reaffirmed by our blessed Lord in the New Testament, -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. And thus is the word of
the Apostle fulfilled. "Where sin abounded, grace did abound more
exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace
reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord."
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