Read Leviticus 12 at Bible Gateway.
Leviticus is teaching us how to avoid uncleanness. In chapter 11, we learned not to consume what is unclean, to avoid polluting the body. In chapter 12, the Torah pivots to the law about a woman’s flow of blood. Recall that ‘the life of the flesh is in the blood’ (Gen 9:4). When blood is lost, as it is when bringing a new life into the world, a woman suffers a metaphorical loss of life, and becomes unclean by it. It’s not the childbirth or the baby that’s impure—far from it!—but the contact with the boundary of death.
But the law does not end there. We are told how move out of a state of uncleanness as the focus of the text shifts to atonement.
Why This Matters: The purpose of God’s Law is not only to reveal our sin and uncleanness (which it does), but to reveal our atonement, our at + one + ment. Atonement brings what was formerly separated, God and man, into unity again.
The Hebrew paragraph for this chapter:
12:1-8 {p} Purification from uncleanness in childbirth
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