Leviticus 12:4

_AND THE LORD SPAKE UNTO MOSES, SAYING,_ Mankind are not only liable to defilement from without, but have internal causes of pollution lying deep in their nature. And hence, the laws which were given to restrain the Israelites from eating unclean animals, or coming in contact with those which died a natural death, were followed by a series of statutes relating to impurity connected with their own persons. These impurities are illustrated in a variety of instances in the following chapters, and traced through the successive stages of life to the period of death. The principle which underlies the legal processes of purification appears to be to awaken a lively sense of sin, by showing how deeply it has infected the whole nature of man-its influence and penal effects appearing in procreation, at birth, in the state of the body during life and at death; insomuch that the flesh, which, when c...

4._And she shall then continue. _The uncleanness of seven days in the case of a male, and fourteen days for a female, has reference to the hemorrhage, as we shall also see elsewhere of the menstrual discharge. For the remainder of the time she is forbidden to take part in religious services, and to approach the sanctuary, (by which word the court is here meant,) and thus is accounted unholy, not only that she should herself lament her condition, but that her husband also, admonished by the sight, should learn to abhor and detest original sin. For this was a serious exhortation to repentance, when they acknowledged that they were contaminated in their offspring, wherein otherwise God’s blessing manifests itself. The question now arises, why the time of purification is double for a female child? Some ascribe this to a natural cause, viz., because the hemorrhage is then of longer continuanc...

Verse Leviticus 12:4. _THE BLOOD OF HER PURIFYING_] A few words will make this subject sufficiently plain. 1. God designs that the human female should bring forth children. 2. That children should derive, under his providence, their being, all their solids and all their fluids, in a word, the whole mass of their bodies, from the substance of the mother. 3. For this purpose he has given to the body of the female an extra quantity of blood and nutritious juices. 4. Before pregnancy this superabundance is evacuated at periodical times. 5. In pregnancy, that which was formerly evacuated is retained for the formation and growth of the fetus, or the general strengthening of the system during the time of pregnancy. 6. After the birth of the child, for _seven_ or _fourteen days_, more or less according to certain circumstances,

This chapter would more naturally follow the 15th chapter of Leviticus. See the note to Leviticus 15:1....

EXPOSITION UNCLEANNESS DERIVED FROM CHILDBIRTH. As there is a natural disgust felt for some kinds of food, which serves as a foundation for the precepts of the last chapter, so there is an instinct which regards some of the concomitants of childbirth, and some diseases, as foul and defiling. In accordance with these instincts, purifying rites are commanded for the restoration of those affected to ceremonial cleanness. These instincts and consequent regulations respecting women in childbirth are found in very many different nations. "The Hindoo law pronounced the mother of a newborn child to be impure for forty days, required the father to bathe as soon as the birth had taken place, and debarred the whole family for a period from religious rites, while they were 'to confine themselves to an inward remembrance of the Deity;' in a Brahmin family this rule extended to all relations within t...

AND SHE SHALL CONTINUE IN THE BLOOD OF HER PURIFYING THREE AND THIRTY DAYS,.... That is, so many more, in all forty; for though at the end of seven days she was in some respects free from her uncleanness, yet not altogether, but remained in the blood of her purifying, or in the purifying of her blood, which was more and more purified, and completely at the end of forty days: so with the Persians it is said, a new mother must avoid everything for forty days; when that time is passed, she may wash and be purified n; and which perhaps Zoroastres, the founder of the Persian religion, at least the reformer of it, being a Jew, as is by some supposed, he might take it from hence: SHE SHALL TOUCH NO HALLOWED THING; as the tithe, the heave offering, the flesh of the peace offerings, as Aben Ezra explains it, if she was a priest's wife: NOR COME INTO THE SANCTUARY; the court of the tabernacle of...

2. CHILDBIRTH LAWS AND INHERITED SIN CHAPTER 12 _ 1. The man-child (Leviticus 12:1)_ 2. The maid-child (Leviticus 12:5) 3. The offerings (Leviticus 12:6) The childbirth laws as contained in this chapter are full of meaning. The woman is constituted unclean by the birth of a child. When a man-child was born, she was to be unclean for seven days, and her purification was to end thirty-three days after that; forty days after childbirth. (A. Bonar, in his work on Leviticus, makes the following conjecture: “May it have been the case that Adam and Eve remained only forty days unfallen! These forty days would thus be a reminiscence of that holy time on earth. The last Adam was forty

LEVITICUS 12. UNCLEANNESS AFTER CHILDBIRTH AND CIRCUMCISION. The period of uncleanness lasts twice as long after the birth of a girl (see on Leviticus 11). After the first week, when the uncleanness may be said to be milder, the child, if a boy, must be circumcised. At the end of the period of her purifying, for a child of either sex, sacrifices are to be offered, a combination of burnt and sin offering, to make atonement for her; a lamb, and a pigeon or a dove, except in case of poverty, when two pigeons or doves may be substituted. These provisions go back as far as those of Leviticus 9. Birth, like menstruation, is naturally regarded as uncanny, and sometimes as demon-caused. Hence, the woman must be set apart. The results are doubtless hygienic, though the emotional effect must often have been dangerous in early times; the code, which keeps up the restriction, says nothing about the...

THREE AND THIRTY. Half the period of maid child. See Leviticus 12:5 (7. 33. 40. See App-10). HALLOWED. Hebrew. _kadesh._ See note on Exodus 3:5....

The time of purification after the birth of a female was twice as long as that after a male. The belief that the birth of a girl was more dangerous for the mother than the birth of a boy prevailed among ancient nations, who considered that hostile supernatural beings were more to be feared in these cases. The practice, at here, survived the belief on which it was founded. Observe that the mother is regarded as unclean but not the child....