Dishonorable Discharge - Leviticus 15

Chapter 15 is interesting because it now talks about ritual purity for people when they experience “discharges” both normal and abnormal. It was funny, during TB’s lecture on this chapter he said that the audience was probably going to be uncomfortable with this chapter and that he could probably skip it but he pointed out that Leviticus was the first book of scripture studied by Jewish children when they start school, so he said “if Jewish 6 year olds could learn about this chapter then you guys can too.”

The first 18 verses address men and all their “discharges” and I’m going to rely on TB’s version here because the KJV is just too abstract. TB describes the first issue as “there are two basic forms: the first is that the discharge is a flow… a liquid that runs; and the second is a much thicker fluid that acts to block or seal an opening. A male with this condition is unclean.” Even though I work in medicine, I don’t really know which disorders these two situations could be talking about, but I guess it was common enough for God to make a rule about it. A man who is unclean due to these factors makes anything that he touches, sits on, rides on, etc. unclean. TB also notes, “interestingly, despite the threat of so easily transmitting his uncleanness there is no requirement for this man to be quarantined or to leave his home or his family. That’s interesting because as we’ll see in a minute, it is a very different situation for women. After the abnormal discharge from the man stops he has to wait 7 days and then bathe himself and wash his clothes and does the two bird sacrifice.

Next deals with “normal” discharges, mostly having to do with a man having sex, presumably with his wife. TB calls the restriction a “wash and wait” basically wash yourself and wait until sunset then you are good to go. The interesting part of his explanation here was the comparison to what uncleanness meant to the Hebrews vs. what it meant to the rest of the world. He notes that when a Hebrew was “unclean” they could do worship or do anything in the tabernacle or religious ceremonies or anything religious like that at all. The reason that this is significant is because anciently most all other religions in the world featured sex as a significant portion of their ceremonies. By making any Hebrew who had had sex that day unclean and therefore unable to perform religious rituals, God made absolutely sure that there could NEVER be a sexual component to any kind of God ordained religious activity. Later I think we’ll see that they Hebrews have a habit of adopting local religious customs and there is always a sexual component, so that will come into play here a bit later.

Verse 19 begins talking about female discharges. First there is the normal menstrual flows and we talked about that previously, that they had those restrictions but were they really restrictions, maybe not so much. But TB also makes an interesting note that I’ve actually read about recently in terms of severe menopausal symptoms. He said that historically women were married young and began having children immediately and nursed those babies for several years and then became pregnant again and continued that cycle until menopause. Thus they didn’t really experience the “uncleanness” factor as often as modern women would because of the infrequent births in comparison. I read that this accounts for the reasons why tribal or ancient women didn’t suffer from extreme menopausal symptoms because they spent most of their lives in the low estrogen state of pregnancy and breastfeeding so the shift to low estrogen in menopause was not that big of a deal, unlike today. Interesting to think about, but I’ve heard this as being accurate as far as the pregnant and nursing cycle goes for women historically.

The abnormal discharges were abnormal bleeding outside of menstruation and after childbirth. Working in women’s health for 25+ years I’ve seen women after about the age of 40 have absolutely insane “abnormal” bleeding for sometimes years and years. This is absolutely something that affects a significant portion of women and I would imagine that it would have been devastating to be considered “unclean” while that was happening. In fact, TB points out that during Christ’s lifetime there was a women who had an “issue of blood” for 12 years. TB notes, “a woman experiencing this health problem is unclean, and remains so the entire time she remains in this condition. Now this condition must have been terrible for a woman because she cannot touch, nor be touched, by another person. She was not required to live outside of her home nor outside the camp, but she would have been avoided because to just brush up against her put YOU into an unclean state… This was a physically and emotionally devastated person who was also a social outcast.”

This is the reason why it was such a big deal with the woman with the 12 years of bleeding touched Jesus. She knew that by doing so she would make him unclean, but she did it anyway because she believed that he could heal her but didn’t want to bother him. She was very sick form years of blood loss, emotionally devastated because she would have been a social outcast, and the was poverty stricken because she’d spent all her money on doctors who couldn’t and didn’t cure her. I couldn’t even imagine what a desperate situation that woman would have been in.

TB’s final note to chapter 15 is worth considering. He says, “Now, while this ends chapter 15, I cannot help but point out that the first words of chapter 16 are: ‘The Lord spake to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord…’ So all these new laws were pretty fresh in the people’s minds, and they knew God meant it when He threatened to kill them if they defiled His Holy Dwelling Place… The requirement is a simple one: Be made clean and holy and remain that way, or die… eternally… at God’s hand.” Pretty significant because for me, the death of Aaron’s sons was several weeks ago, but to the people it was pretty immediately afterward, so they would have had a very visceral reminder of “obey or suffer very significant consequences.” I wonder if not living under the threat of literal death makes it easier or harder to follow the gospel for us today.