_OF THE UNCLEANNESS OF ISSUES._
LEV. xv. 1-33.
Inasmuch as the law concerning defilement from issues is presupposed
and referred to in that concerning the defilement of child-bearing, in
chap. xii., it will be well to consider this before the latter. For
this order there is the more reason, because, as will appear, although
the two sections are separated, in the present arrangement of the
book, by the law concerning defilement by leprosy (xiii., xiv.), they
both refer to the same general topic, and are based upon the same
moral conceptions.
The arrangement of the law in chap. xv. is very simple. Verses 2-18
deal with the cases of ceremonial defilement by issues in men; vv.
19-30, with analogous cases in women. The principle in both classes is
one and the same; the issue, whether normal or abnormal, rendered the
person affected unclean; only, when abnormal, the defilement was
regarded as more serious than in other cases, not only in a physical,
but also in a ceremonial and legal aspect. In all such cases, in
addition to the washing with water which was always required, it was
commanded that on the eighth day from the time of the cessation of the
issue, the person who had been so affected should come before the
priest and present for his cleansing a sin-offering and a
burnt-offering.
What now is the principle which underlies these regulations?
In seeking the answer to this question, we at once note the suggestive
fact that this law concerning issues takes cognisance only of such as
are connected with the sexual organisation. All others, however, in
themselves, from a merely physical point of view, equally unwholesome
or loathsome, are outside the purview of the Mosaic code. They do not
render the person affected, according to the law, ceremonially
unclean. It is therefore evident that the lawgiver must have had
before him something other than merely the physical peculiarities of
these defilements, and that, for the true meaning of this part of the
law, we must look deeper than the surface. It should also be observed
here that this characteristic of the law just mentioned, places the
law of issues under the same general category with the law (chap.
xii.) concerning the uncleanness of child-bearing, as indeed the
latter itself intimates (xii. 2). The question thus arises: Why are
these particular cases, and such as these only, regarded as
ceremonially defiling?
To see the reason of this, we must recur to facts which have already
come before us. When our first parents sinned, death was denounced
against them as the penalty of their sin. Such had been the threat:
"In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die." The death
denounced indeed affected the whole being, the spiritual as well as
the physical nature of man; but it comprehended the death of the body,
which thus became, what it still is, the most impressive manifestation
of the presence of sin in every person who dies. Hence, as we have
seen, the law kept this connection between sin and death steadily
before the mind, in that it constantly applied the principle that the
dead defiles. Not only so, but, for this reason, such things as tended
to bring death were also reckoned unclean; and thus the regulations of
the law concerning clean and unclean meats, while strictly hygienic in
character, were yet grounded in this profound ethical fact of the
connection between sin and death; had man not sinned, nothing in the
world had been able to bring in death, and all things had been clean.
For the same reason, again, leprosy, as exemplifying in a vivid and
terrible way disease as a progressive death, a living manifestation of
the presence of the curse of God, and therefore of the presence of
sin, a type of all disease, was regarded as involving ceremonial
defilement, and therefore as requiring sacrificial cleansing.
But in the curse denounced upon our first parents was yet more. It was
specially taught that the curse should affect the generative power of
the race. For we read (Gen. iii. 16): "Unto the woman He said, I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children." Whatever these words may precisely mean, it is
plain that they are intended to teach that, because of sin, the curse
of God fell in some mysterious way upon the sexual organisation. And
although the woman only is specifically mentioned, as being "first in
the transgression," that the curse fell also upon the same part of
man's nature is plain from the words in Gen. v. 3, where the long
mortuary record of the antediluvians is introduced by the profoundly
significant statement that Adam began the long line, with its
inheritance of death, by begetting a son "in his own likeness, after
his image." Fallen himself under the curse of death, physical and
spiritual, he therewith lost the capacity to beget a creature like
himself in his original state, in the image of God, and could only be
the means of bringing into the world a creature who was an inheritor
of physical weakness and spiritual and bodily death.
In the light of this ancient record, which must have been before the
mind of the Hebrew lawgiver, we can now see why the law concerning
unclean issues should have had special relation to that part of man's
physical organisation which has to do with the propagation of the
race. Just as death defiled, because it was a visible representation
of the presence of the curse of God, and thus of sin, as the ground of
the curse, even so was it with all the issues specified in this law.
They were regarded as making a man unclean, because they were
manifestations of the curse in a part of man's nature which, according
to the Word of God, sin has specially affected. For this reason they
fell under the same law as death. They separated the person thus
affected from the congregation, and excluded him from the public
worship of a holy God, as making him "unclean."
It is impossible now to miss the spiritual meaning of these laws
concerning issues of this class. In that these alone, out of many
others, which from a merely physical point of view are equally
offensive, were taken under the cognisance of this law, the fact was
thereby symbolically emphasised that the fountain of life in man is
defiled. To be a sinner were bad enough, if it only involved the
voluntary and habitual practice of sin. But this law of issues
testifies to us, even now, that, as God sees man's case, it is far
worse than this. The evil of sin is so deeply seated that it could lie
no deeper. The curse has in such manner fallen on our being, as that
in man and woman the powers and faculties which concern the
propagation of their kind have fallen under the blight. All that any
son of Adam can now do is to beget a son in his own physical and moral
image, an heir of death, and by nature unclean and unholy.
Sufficiently distasteful this truth is in all ages; but in none
perhaps ever more so than our own, in which it has become a
fundamental postulate of much popular theology, and of popular
politics as well, that man is naturally not bad, but good, and, on the
whole, is doing as well as under the law of evolution, and considering
his environment, can reasonably be expected. The spiritual principle
which underlies the law concerning defilement by issues, as also that
concerning the uncleanness of child-bearing, assumes the exact
opposite.
It is indeed true that similar causes of ceremonial uncleanness have
been recognised in ancient and in modern times among many other
peoples. But this is no objection to the truth of the interpretation
of the Mosaic law here given. For in so far as there is genuine
agreement, the fact may rather confirm than weaken the argument for
this view of the case, as showing that there is an ineradicable
instinct in the heart of man which connects all that directly or
indirectly has to do with the continuance of our race, in a peculiar
degree, with the ideas of uncleanness and shame. And, on the other
hand, the differences in such cases from the Mosaic law show us just
what we should expect,--a degree of moral confusion and a deadening of
the moral sense among the heathen nations, which is most significant.
As has been justly remarked, the Hindoo has one law on this subject
for the Brahman, another for others; the outcast for some deadly sin,
often of a purely frivolous nature, and a new-born child, are reckoned
equally unclean. Or,--to take the case of a people contemporary with
the Hebrews,--among the ancient Chaldeans, while these same issues
were accounted ceremonially defiling, as in the law of Moses, with
these were also reckoned in the same category, as unclean, whatsoever
was separated from the body, even to the cuttings of the hair and the
parings of the nails. Evidently, we thus have here, not likeness, but
a profound and most suggestive moral contrast between the Chaldean and
the Hebrew law. Of the profound ethical truth which vitalises and
gives deep significance to the law of Moses, we find no trace in the
other system. And it is no wonder if, indeed, the one law is, as
declared, a revelation from the holy God, and the other the work of
sinful and sin-blinded man.
It is another moral lesson which is brought before us in these laws
that, as God looks at the matter, sin pertains not only to action, but
also to being. Not only actions, from which we can abstain, but
operations of nature which we cannot help, alike defile; defile in
such a manner and degree as to require, even as voluntary acts of sin,
the cleansing of water, and the expiatory blood of a sin-offering. One
could not avoid many of the defilements mentioned in this chapter, but
that made no difference; he was unclean. For the lesser grades of
uncleanness it sufficed that one be purified by washing with water;
and a sin-offering was only required when this purification had been
neglected; but in all cases where the defilement assumed its extreme
form, the sin-offering and the burnt-offering must be brought, and be
offered for the unclean person by the priest. So is it, we are taught,
with that sin of nature which these cases symbolised; we cannot help
it, and yet the washing of regeneration and the cleansing of the blood
of Christ is required for its removal. Very impressive in its teaching
now becomes the miracle in which our Lord healed the poor woman
afflicted with the issue of blood (Mark v. 25-34), for which she had
vainly sought cure. It was a case like that covered by the law in
chap. xv. 25-27; and he who will read and consider the provisions of
that law will understand, as otherwise he could not, how great her
trial and how heavy her burden must have been. He will wonder also, as
never before, at the boldness of her faith, who, although, according
to the law, her touch should defile the Lord, yet ventured to believe
that not only should this not be so, but that the healing power which
went forth from Him should neutralise the defilement, and carry
healing virtue to the very centre of her life. Thus, if other miracles
represent our Lord as meeting the evil of sin in its various
manifestations in action, this miracle represents His healing power as
reaching to the very source and fountain of life, where it is needed
no less.
The law concerning the removal of these defilements, after all that
has preceded, will admit only of one interpretation. The washing of
water is the uniform symbol of the cleansing of the soul from
pollution by the power of the Holy Ghost; the sacrifices point to the
sacrifice of Christ, in its twofold aspect as burnt-offering and
sin-offering, as required by and availing for the removal of the
sinful defilement which, in the mind of God, attaches even to that in
human nature which is not under the control of the will. At the same
time, whereas in all these cases the sin-offering prescribed is the
smallest known to the law, it is symbolised, in full accord with the
teaching of conscience, that the gravity of the defilement, where
there has not been the active concurrence of the will, is less than
where the will has seconded nature. In all cases of prolonged
defilement from these sources, it was required that the affected
person should still be regarded as unclean for seven days after the
cessation of the infirmity, and on the eighth day came the sacrificial
cleansing. The significance of the seven as the covenant number, the
number also wherein was completed the old creation, has been already
before us: that of "the eighth" will best be considered in connection
with the provisions of chap. xii., to which we next turn our
attention.
The law of this chapter has a formal closing, in which are used these
words (ver. 31): "Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from
their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they
defile My tabernacle that is in the midst of them."
Of which the natural meaning is this, that the defilements mentioned,
as conspicuous signs of man's fallen condition, were so offensive
before a holy God, as apart from these purifications to have called
down the judgment of death on those in whom they were found. In these
words lies also the deeper spiritual thought--if we have rightly
apprehended the symbolic import of these regulations--that not only,
as in former cases mentioned under the law of offerings, do voluntary
acts of sin separate from God and if unatoned for call down His
judgment, but that even our infirmities and the involuntary motions of
sin in our nature have the same effect, and, apart from the cleansing
of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, ensure the
final judgment of death.