BibleProject | One Story That Leads to JesusSample

How can a corrupted person raised in a defiled world enter into a rebuilt Eden space that has no corruption, defilement, or death? That’s a major question in this part of the Bible.

In today’s reading, you’ll continue learning about the symbolic, ritual practices that prepared the Israelites to enter God’s sacred space. Because God creates and sustains all life, any sign of death or decay has no place in either the original Eden or its portable replica, the tabernacle.

This might explain why our reading today portrays the reproductive fluids as ritually unclean. In themselves, God made everything good and gave human bodies the potential to multiply life—bodies and bodily fluids are good and necessary for life. But perhaps the idea is that those fluids outside of the body represent a loss of life. This is difficult to interpret, but everything in this passage is about distinguishing life from death and preventing anything even remotely associated with death from entering the tabernacle.

So before ritually impure people could return to God’s sacred space, they needed to undergo a ceremonial washing. Notice the hyperlinks to the flood story packed into this section of Leviticus. Just as God used the waters of the flood to wash the stain of evil from his creation, now the Israelites need to wash their hands and bodies with water to keep their community clean of sin’s pollution.

There’s no way for a mortal creature to avoid coming into contact with death. But the God of life reaches out to humans stained by a broken world, offering them a means to purify themselves so they can reenter his sacred space. God wants to be with them, so he makes a way!

Reflection Questions

• What parallels do you notice between the flood story (Gen. 6-9) and the purification rituals in Leviticus?
• Within the ritual purity system of Leviticus, both holiness and impurity were contagious: something that came into contact with God’s presence (like the sacrifices offered on the altar) became holy, while a person who touched something impure became ritually impure. How do these purity regulations inform your understanding of the New Testament stories about Jesus healing people with “unclean” diseases?