Read Leviticus 12 here or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraph:
12:1-8 {p} Purification from uncleanness in childbirth
We saw in Lev 11 how to avoid uncleanness by not consuming that which is unclean. In Lev 12, the law concerning a woman’s flow of blood is painting a picture of uncleanness that arises from death. Recall that the life is in the blood (Gen 9:4). When a woman suffers loss of blood, she is suffering loss of life, and becomes unclean by it.
In the law of clean and unclean (which began in chapter 11), we are being taught about situations that produce uncleanness arising from death: the dead carcasses of unclean animals, and the woman’s flow of blood. But the law does not end there. We are told how to go from a state of uncleanness to cleanness.
The focus shifts from the uncleanness to the atonement. We begin to see that the purpose of Torah is not only to reveal our sin and uncleanness, although that is accomplished, but to reveal our atonement, our at + one + ment, that which brings the two which were formerly separated, God and man, into unity again.
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