_THE UNCLEANNESS OF CHILD-BEARING._
LEV. xii. 1-8.
The reference in xii. 2 to the regulations given in xv. 19, as
remarked in the preceding chapter, shows us that the author of these
laws regarded the circumstances attending child-birth as falling under
the same general category, in a ceremonial and symbolic aspect, as the
law of issues. As a special case, however, the law concerning
child-birth presents some very distinctive and instructive features.
The period during which the mother was regarded as unclean, in the
full comprehension of that term, was seven days, as in the analogous
case mentioned in xv. 19, with the remarkable exception, that when she
had borne a daughter this period was doubled. At the expiration of
this period of seven days, her ceremonial uncleanness was regarded as
in so far lessened that the restrictions affecting the ordinary
relations of life, as ordered, xv. 19-23, were removed. She was not,
however, yet allowed to touch any hallowed thing or to come into the
sanctuary, until she had fulfilled, from the time of the birth of the
child, if a son, forty days; if a daughter, twice forty, or eighty
days. At the expiration of the longer period, she was to bring, as in
the law concerning the prolonged issue of blood (xv. 25-30), a
burnt-offering and a sin-offering unto the door of the tent of
meeting, wherewith the priest was to make an atonement for her; when
first she should be accounted clean, and restored to full covenant
privileges. The only difference from the similar law in chap. xv. is
in regard to the burnt-offering commanded, which was larger and more
costly,--a lamb, instead of a turtle dove, or a young pigeon. Still,
in the same spirit of gracious accommodation to the poor which was
illustrated in the general law of the sin-offering, it was ordered
(ver. 8.): "If her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall take
two turtledoves, or two young pigeons; the one for a burnt offering,
and the other for a sin offering." The law then applied, according to
xv. 29, 30. A gracious provision this was, as all will remember, of
which the mother of our Lord availed herself (Luke ii. 22-24), as
being one of those who were too poor to bring a lamb for a
burnt-offering.
To the meaning of these regulations, the key is found in the same
conceptions which we have seen to underlie the law concerning issues.
In the birth of a child, the special original curse against the woman
is regarded by the law as reaching its fullest, most consummate and
significant expression. For the extreme evil of the state of sin into
which the first woman, by that first sin, brought all womanhood, is
seen most of all in this, that now woman, by means of those powers
given her for good and blessing, can bring into the world only a child
of sin. And it is, apparently, because we here see the operation of
this curse in its most conspicuous form, that the time of her enforced
separation from the tabernacle worship is prolonged to a period of
forty or eighty days.
It has been usual to speak of the time of the mother's uncleanness,
and subsequent continued exclusion from the tabernacle worship, as
being doubled in the case of the birth of a daughter; but it were,
perhaps, more accurate to regard the normal length of these periods as
being respectively fourteen and eighty days, of which the former is
double of that required in xv. 28. This normal period would then be
more properly regarded as shortened by one half in the case of a male
child, in virtue of his circumcision on the eighth day.
THE ORDINANCE OF CIRCUMCISION.
xii. 3.
"And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be
circumcised."
Although the rite of circumcision here receives a new and special
sanction, it had been appointed long before by God as the sign of His
covenant with Abraham (Gen. xvii. 10-14). Nor was circumcision,
probably, even then a new thing. That the ancient Egyptians practised
it is well known; so also did the Arabs and Phoenicians; in fact, the
custom has been very extensively observed, not only by nations with
whom the Israelites came in contact, but by others who have not had,
in historic times, connection with any civilised peoples; as, for
example, the Congo negroes, and certain Indian tribes in South
America.
The fundamental idea connected with circumcision, by most of the
peoples who have practised it, appears to have been physical
purification; indeed, the Arabs call it by the name _tatur_, which has
this precise meaning. And it deserves to be noticed that for this idea
regarding circumcision there is so much reason in fact, that high
medical authorities have attributed to it a real hygienic value,
especially in warm climates.
No one need feel any difficulty in supposing that this common
conception attached to the rite also in the minds of the Hebrews.
Rather all the more fitting it was, if there was a basis in fact for
this familiar opinion, that God should thus have taken a ceremony
already known to the surrounding peoples, and in itself of a wholesome
physical effect, and constituted it for Abraham and his seed a symbol
of an analogous spiritual fact; namely, the purification of sin at its
fountain-head, the cleansing of the evil nature with which we all are
born. It should be plain enough that it makes nothing against this as
the true interpretation of the rite, even if that be granted which
some have claimed, that it has had, in some instances, a connection
with the phallic worship so common in the East, or that it has been
regarded by some as a sacrificial ceremony. Only the more noteworthy
would it thus appear that the Hebrews should have held strictly to
that view of its significance which had a solid basis in physical
fact,--a fact, moreover, which made it a peculiarly fitting symbol of
the spiritual grace which the Biblical writers connect with it. For
that it was so regarded by them will not be disputed. In this very
book (xxvi. 41) we read of an "uncircumcised heart;" as also in
Deuteronomy, the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and other books
of Scripture.
All this, as intimating the signification of circumcision as here
enjoined, is further established by the New Testament references. Of
these the most formal is perhaps that in Col. ii. 10, 11, where we
read that believers in Christ, in virtue of their union with Him in
whom the unclean nature has been made clean, are said to be
"circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting
off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;" so that
Paul elsewhere writes to the Philippians (iii. 3): "We are the
circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."
And that God, in selecting this ancient rite to be the sign of His
covenant in the flesh of Abraham and his seed (Gen. xvii. 13), had
regard to the deep spiritual meaning which it could so naturally carry
is explicitly declared by the Apostle Paul (Rom. iv. 11), who tells us
that this sign of circumcision was "a seal of the righteousness of
faith," even the righteousness and the faith concerning which, in the
previous context, he was arguing; and which are still, for all men,
the one, the ground, and the other, the condition, of salvation. It is
truly strange that, in the presence of these plain words of the
Apostle, any should still cling to the idea that circumcision had
reference only to the covenant with Israel as a nation, and not, above
all, to this profound spiritual truth which is basal to salvation,
whether for the Jew or for the Gentile.
And so, when the Hebrew infant was circumcised, it signified for him
and for his parents these spiritual realities. It was an outward sign
and seal of the covenant of God with Abraham and with his seed, to be
a God to him and to his seed after him; and it signified further that
this covenant of God was to be carried out and made effectual only
through the putting away of the flesh, the corrupt nature with which
we are born, and of all that belongs to it, in order that, thus
circumcised with the circumcision of the heart, every child of Abraham
might indeed be an Israelite in whom there should be no guile.
And the law commands, in accord with the original command to Abraham,
that the circumcision should take place on the eighth day. This is the
more noticeable, that among other nations which practised, or still
practise, the rite, the time is different. The Egyptians, for example,
circumcised their sons between the sixth and tenth years, and the
modern Mohammedans between the twelfth and fourteenth year. What is
the significance of this eighth day?
In the first place, it is easy to see that we have in this direction a
provision of God's mercy; for if delayed beyond infancy or early
childhood, as among many other peoples, the operation is much more
serious, and may even involve some danger; while in so early infancy
it is comparatively trifling, and attended with no risk.
Further, by the administration of circumcision at the very opening of
life, it is suggested that in the Divine ideal the grace which was
signified thereby, of the cleansing of nature, was to be bestowed upon
the child, not first at a late period of life, but from its very
beginning, thus anticipating the earliest awakening of the principle
of inborn sin. It was thus signified that before ever the child knew,
or could know, the grace that was seeking to save him, he was to be
taken into covenant relation with God. So even under the strange form
of this ordinance we discover the same mind that was in Him who said
concerning infant children (Luke xviii. 16): "Suffer the little
children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the
kingdom of God." Thus we may well recollect, in passing, that,
although the law has passed away in the Levitical form, the mind of
the Lawgiver concerning the little children of His people, is still
the same.
But the question still remains, Why was the eighth day selected, and
not rather, for instance, the sixth or the seventh, which would have
no less perfectly represented these ideas? The answer is to be found
in the symbolic significance of the eighth day. As the old creation
was completed in six days, with a following Sabbath of rest, so that
six is ever the number of the old creation, as under imperfection and
sin; the eighth day, which is the first day of a new week, everywhere
in Scripture appears as the number symbolic of the new creation, in
which all things shall be restored in the great redemption through the
Second Adam. The thought finds its fullest expression in the
resurrection of Christ, as the First-born from the dead, the Beginning
and the Lord of the new creation, who in His resurrection-body
manifested the first-fruits in physical life of the new creation,
rising from the dead on the first, or, in other words, the day after
the seventh, the eighth day. This gives the key to the use of the
number eight in the Mosaic symbolism. Thus in the law of the cleansing
of the man or the woman that had an issue, the sacrifices which
effectuated their formal deliverance from the curse under which,
through the weakness of their old nature, they had suffered, were to
be offered on the eighth day (xv. 14, 29); the priestly cleansing of
the leper from the taint of his living death was also effected on the
eighth day (xiv. 10); so also the cleansing of the Nazarite who had
been defiled by the dead (Numb. vi. 10). So also the holy convocation
which closed the feast of tabernacles or ingathering--the feast which,
as we shall see, typically prefigured the great harvest of which
Christ was the First-fruits--was ordained, in like manner, for the
eighth day (xxiii. 36). With good reason, then, was circumcision
ordered for the eighth day, seeing that what it symbolically
signified was precisely this: the putting off of the flesh with which
we are born through the circumcision of Christ, and therewith the
first beginning of a new and purified nature--a change so profound and
radical, and in which the Divine efficiency is so immediately
concerned, that Paul said of it that if any man was in Christ, in
whose circumcision we are circised (Col. ii. 11), "there is a new
creation" (2 Cor. v. 17, margin, R.V.).
PURIFICATION AFTER CHILD-BIRTH.
xii. 4-8.
"And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three and
thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the
sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if
she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in
her impurity: and she shall continue in the blood of her
purifying threescore and six days. And when the days of her
purifying are fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall
bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young
pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, unto the door of the
tent of meeting, unto the priest: and he shall offer it before
the Lord, and make atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed
from the fountain of her blood. This is the law for her that
beareth, whether a male or a female. And if her means suffice not
for a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves, or two young
pigeons; the one for a burnt offering, and the other for a sin
offering: and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she
shall be clean."
Until the circumcision of the new-born child, on the eighth day, he
was regarded by the law as ceremonially still in a state of nature,
and therefore as symbolically unclean. For this reason, again, the
mother who had brought him into the world, and whose life was so
intimately connected with his life, was regarded as unclean also.
Unclean, under analogous circumstances, according to the law of xv.
19, she was reckoned doubly unclean in this case,--unclean because of
her issue, and unclean because of her connection with this child,
uncircumcised and unclean. But when the symbolic cleansing of the
child took place by the ordinance of circumcision, then her
uncleanness, so far as occasioned by her immediate relation to him,
came to an end. She was not indeed completely restored; for, according
to the law, in her still continuing condition, it was impossible that
she should be allowed to come into the tabernacle of the Lord, or
touch any hallowed thing; but the ordinance which admitted her child,
admitted her also again to the fellowship of the covenant people.
The longer period of forty--or, in the case of the birth of a female
child, of twice forty--days must also be explained upon symbolical
grounds. Some have indeed attempted to account for these periods, as
also for the difference in their length in the two cases, by a
reference to beliefs of the ancients with regard to the physical
condition of the mother during these periods; but such notions of the
ancients are not justified by facts; nor, especially, would they by
any means account for the greatly prolonged period of eighty days in
the case of the female child. It is possible that in the forty, and
twice forty, we may have a reference to the forty weeks during which
the life of the unborn child had been identified with that of the
mother,--a child which, it must be remembered, according to the
uniform Biblical view, was not innocent, but conceived in sin; for
each week of which connection of life, the mother suffered a judicial
exclusion of one, or, in the case of the birth of a daughter, of two
days; the time being doubled in the latter case with allusion to the
double curse which, according to Genesis, rested upon the woman, as
"first in the transgression." But, apart from this, however difficult
it may be to give a satisfactory explanation of the fact, it is
certain that throughout Scripture the number forty appears to have a
symbolic meaning; and one can usually trace in its application a
reference, more or less distinct, to the conception of trial or
testing. Thus for forty days was Moses in the mount,--a time of
testing for Israel, as for him: forty days, the spies explored the
promised land; forty years, Israel was tried in the wilderness; forty
days, abode Elijah in the wilderness; forty days, also, was our Lord
fasting in the wilderness; and forty days, again, He abode in
resurrection life upon the earth.
The forty (or eighty) days ended, the mother was now formally
reinstated in the fulness of her privileges as a daughter of Israel.
The ceremonial, as in the law of issues, consisted in the presentation
of a burnt-offering and a sin-offering, with the only variation that,
wherever possible, the burnt-offering must be a young lamb, instead of
a dove or pigeon; the reason for which variation is to be found either
in the fact that the burnt-offering was to represent not herself
alone, but also her child, or, possibly, as some have suggested, it
was because she had been so much longer excluded from the tabernacle
service than in the other case.[25]
[25] This latter reason, however, would rather appear to have
demanded, as in the case of the leper, a guilt-offering.
The teaching of this law, then, is twofold: it concerns, first, the
woman; and, secondly, the child which she bears. As regards the woman,
it emphasises the fact that, because "first in the trangression," she
is under special pains and penalties in virtue of her sex. The
capacity of motherhood, which is her crown and her glory, though still
a precious privilege, has yet been made, because of sin, an
inevitable instrument of pain, and that because of her relation to the
first sin. We are thus reminded that the specific curse denounced
against the woman, as recorded in the book of Genesis, is no dead
letter, but a fact. No doubt, the conception is one which raises
difficulties which in themselves are great, and to modern thought are
greater than ever. Nevertheless, the fact abides unaltered, that even
to this day woman is under special pains and disabilities, inseparably
connected with her power of motherhood. Modern theorists, men and
women with nineteenth-century notions concerning politics and
education, may persist in ignoring this; but the fact abides, and
cannot be got rid of by passing resolutions in a mass-meeting, or even
by Act of Parliament or Congress.
And so, as it is useless to object to facts, it is only left to object
to the Mosaic view of the facts, which connects them with sin, and, in
particular, with the first sin. Why should all the daughters of Eve
suffer because of her sin? Where is the justice in such an ordinance?
A question this is to which we cannot yet give any satisfactory
answer. But it does not follow that because in any proposition there
are difficulties which at present we are unable to solve, therefore
the proposition is false. And, further, it is important to observe
that this law, under which womanhood abides, is after all only a
special case under that law of the Divine government which is
announced in the second commandment, by which the iniquities of the
fathers are visited upon the children. It is most certainly a law
which, to our apprehension, suggests great moral difficulties, even to
the most reverent spirits; but it is no less certainly a law which
represents a conspicuous and tremendous fact, which is illustrated,
for instance, in the family of every drunkard in the world. And it is
well worth observing, that while the ceremonial law, which was
specially intended to keep this fact before the mind and the
conscience, is abrogated, the fact that woman is still under certain
Divinely imposed disabilities because of that first sin, is reaffirmed
in the New Testament, and is by apostolic authority applied in the
administration of Church government. For Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim.
ii. 12, 13): "I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over
a man.... For Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath
fallen into transgression." Modern theorists, and so-called
"reformers" in Church, State, and society, busy with their social,
governmental, and ecclesiastical novelties, would do well to heed this
apostolic reminder.
All the more beautiful, as against this dark background of mystery, is
the word of the Apostle which follows, wherein he reminds us that,
through the grace of God, even by means of those very powers of
motherhood on which the curse has so heavily fallen, has come the
redemption of the woman; so that "she shall be saved through the
childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification
with sobriety" (1 Tim. ii. 15, R.V.); seeing that "in Christ Jesus,"
in respect of the completeness and freeness of salvation, "there can
be no male and female" (Gal. iii. 28, R.V.).
But, in the second place, we may also derive abiding instruction from
this law, concerning the child which is of man begotten and of woman
born. It teaches us that not only has the curse thus fallen on the
woman, but that, because she is herself a sinful creature, she can
only bring forth another sinful creature like herself; and if a
daughter, then a daughter inheriting all her own peculiar infirmities
and disabilities. The law, as regards both mother and child,
expresses in the language of symbolism those words of David in his
penitential confession (Psalm li. 5): "Behold, I was shapen in
iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Men may
contemptuously call this "theology," or even rail at it as
"Calvinism;" but it is more than theology, more than Calvinism; it is
a _fact_, to which until this present time history has seen but one
exception, even that mysterious Son of the Virgin, who claimed,
however, to be no mere man, but the Christ, the Son of the Blessed!
And yet many, who surely can think but superficially upon the solemn
facts of life, still object to this most strenuously, that even the
new-born child should be regarded as in nature sinful and unclean.
Difficulty here we must all admit,--difficulty so great that it is
hard to overstate it--regarding the bearing of this fact on the
character of the holy and merciful God, who in the beginning made man.
And yet, surely, deeper thought must confess that herein the Mosaic
view of infant nature--a view which is assumed and taught throughout
Holy Scripture--however humbling to our natural pride, is only in
strictest accord with what the admitted principles of the most exact
science compel us to admit. For whenever, in any case, we find all
creatures of the same class doing, under all circumstances, any one
thing, we conclude that the reason for this can only lie in the nature
of such creatures, antecedent to any influence of a tendency to
imitation. If, for instance, the ox everywhere and always eats the
green thing of the earth, and not flesh, the reason, we say, is found
simply in the nature of the ox as he comes into being. So when we see
all men, everywhere, under all circumstances, as soon as ever they
come to the time of free moral choice, always choosing and committing
sin, what can we conclude--regarding this, not as a theological, but
merely as a scientific question--but that man, as he comes into the
world, must have a sinful nature? And this being so, then why must not
the law of heredity apply, according to which, by a law which knows of
no exceptions, like ever produces its like?
Least of all, then, should those object to the view of child-nature
which is represented in this law of Leviticus, who accept these
commonplaces of modern science as representing facts. Wiser it were to
turn attention to the other teaching of the law, that, notwithstanding
these sad and humiliating facts, there is provision made by God,
through the cleansing by grace of the very nature in which we are
born, and atonement for the sin which without our fault we inherit,
for a complete redemption from all the inherited corruption and guilt.
And, last of all, especially should Christian parents with joy and
thankfulness receive the manifest teaching of this law,--teaching
reaffirmed by our blessed Lord in the New Testament,--that God our
Father offers to parental faith Himself to take in hand our children,
even from the earliest beginning of their infant days, and, purifying
the fountain of their life through "a circumcision made without
hands," receive the little ones into covenant relation with Himself,
to their eternal salvation. And thus is the word of the Apostle
fulfilled: "Where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly:
that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."