Day 40: Leviticus 11 - 15 - Wholesome lifestyles

The next 5 chapter of Leviticus are tedious. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, it just is no longer applied and very procedural. I won’t bore you with the details, just the principles.

Chapter 11 deals with clean and unclean animals

The broader categories of beasts are those with cloven hooves and which chew the cud, and of fish with scales and fins, all of which are clean. That is empirically true. It was a right call.

To this day I would not eat a cat, dog, snake or lizard, nor do I eat lobster and crayfish although the latter is more personal choice. Unclean creatures are accepted as such by contemporary society.

Most birds were off the menu, excepting the domestic birds – again, it still tends to be so. 

Interestingly, locusts and beetles are fine – great, given that Elijah and John the Baptist relied rather heavily on a daily diet of locusts.

Other creatures are specifically listed. Notably though, if an unclean creature, alive or dead, touched any household object, that was also unclean.

Incidentally, what was codified as unclean dated way back to the ark, so to see all of this as a purely religious and capricious code is simply not fair. The world then and now saw most of those things in a similar light. The law just made it absolutely clear. 

Chapter 12 deals with the ritual cleansing of a woman

She was deemed “unclean” during menstruation and for the 7 days after birth of a male child or 14 days for a female child.

A further extended period of confinement applied to male children, 33 days, and female children, 66 days.  Tumah involved ritual cleansing, isolation and exclusion from any sacred object – which interestingly means that at all other times she was allowed to handle sacred things.

It doesn’t mean she was wretched, the way Muslims see it. She did not become some abhorrent, untouchable thing. The principle behind this law must be understood.

It had to do with death, or in the case of menstruation, virtual death or life denied. Birth was a form of death in herself, to enable life in her child. We call that partum or separation, during which all the faculties of life left in her, die off – notably the lining of the womb.

Touching anything dead in Jewish law was deemed unclean. There is nothing more mystical or prejudicial about this law. It gave her time to restore and heal, to normalize after birth.

Luke 2:21-25 shows Mary going through the required period of cleansing before presenting Jesus to the priests in the temple. It was not a negative or frowned-on thing, but a female ritual that was seen as part of the dignity of womanhood.

The extended confinement for a girl child related to her own ability to give life and to experience similar cycles of death and regeneration. All that a boy needed was an 8^th day circumcision and that was his ritual cleansing and consecration done.

Chapters 13 and 14 deal mainly with leprosy

It all seems pretty heartless, except that great care was prescribed for assessing whether the person was declared unclean, after which they were required to leave the camp.

Contagious diseases like leprosy spread by sharing towels, water and other household things. It could spread through whole communities. Until a cure emerged in the 1940's, quarantine and cleansing regimes were the only accepted approaches to treatment. 

God did not offer healing and miraculous solutions to everything, despite that being a time when He was so imminent. Life had to be allowed to run its course and holy living did not exempt anyone from its consequences.

Even more notable was that the Jews had no special exemption from life and its course. Holy they may have been but death and sickness still ran its course. Nor are we exempted from crisis, sickness, mistakes and other things that isolate us from life.

Wounded lions and sickly antelope get the same treatment, so did Paul and Moses in their respective life journeys, but God always charts a way back. We are never untouchable to Him.

Thus, as a shadow of Christ, priests regularly visited leper colonies outside the camp. If any were in recovery, they were reintegrated, but to cleanse them of contamination they cut off all hair, even eyebrows, changed clothes and so on. 

Some of those practices weren’t seen again until Florence Nightingale reintroduced quarantine and disinfection procedures in the Crimean War. It was remarkable for its era and, sadly necessary in a close-confined tented community.  

Chapter 15 deals specifically with issues

Suppurating sores, boils, hemorrhaging and female issues, were also a sad but real part of daily life, especially for a confined community living in tents and in close proximity.

Conclusions

That concludes a section full of many regulations and somewhat heavy demands for determining unclean from clean. It was all part of holiness. 

It boils down to their not just being ritually holy. They also had to be holy in their daily lives, clean, hygienic, conscious of keeping their lives in order. It was an essential principle for a close community, but it always defined the Jews.

I find nothing improper in that. They were refined and dignified. Happy is the soul or family that lives a wholesome, clean, healthy life - and with less medical bills, richer too. Ruth left Moab and pursued Judaism because she admired their wholesome lifestyle.

Whatever else makes us special in the eyes of God, we also need to practice wholesome living. If our faith doesn’t translate to that, we are reprobates.

I live in a culture where laws are broken habitually. People drive in yellow lanes, throw their litter out of windows or jump red traffic lights. Yet we have a truly progressive constitution. Well how does a society achieve anything meaningful if it can’t get the basics right?

The constitution was birthed out of a racial, prejudicial past, but how will races integrate and harmonize if there is no etiquette, no nomalisation  of behavior. Rather it reinforces prejudice and breeds interracial resentment and discord. The Jews sorted that and endured.  

(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com