As germs are to a surgeon, "uncleanness" is to Leviticus. Chapters 11-15 describe elaborate precautions--what animals to avoid and how to treat "unclean" skin disease, mildewed clothing or walls, and bodily emissions.
Scholars point out that many clean and unclean rules have good health habits behind them, such as the rule to quarantine a person with an infectious disease or the rule against eating pork (which carries many parasites).
Others say that dietary laws were meant to keep the Israelites apart from their neighbours. Pigs were prominent in Canaanite worship; therefore the Israelites were not to eat pigs. A different dietary standard would keep the two groups from mixing socially, for a meal was always part of Middle Eastern hospitality.
Still other scholars suggest that the uncleanness rules simply fit into what Israelites intuitively thought proper. God was reinforcing a natural sense of repulsion toward creeping insects, scavenger birds, bodily emissions, and skin diseases.
All these explanations have merit, but the underlying basis of clean and unclean was religious. Being unclean was not dangerous or wrong. In fact, you could hardly avoid it. Practically everyone became "unclean" from time to time. But you could not worship God in the Tent of Meeting while you were unclean, nor bring anything unclean into the presence of God. His holiness would destroy it--and you (Leviticus 15:31).
So Leviticus trains God's people to watch their lives as carefully as surgeons watch their sterile techniques. They must develop the habit of carefulness, even about something they cannot see or feel. They must think about preparing themselves for God, not just do whatever "feels right."
It was not a question of how they felt about God, any more than a surgeon's concern is how he "feels" about germs. Clear, absolute standards laid out what could be acceptable to a God who is perfectly clean, absolute, unchanging. Just as surgeons had to struggle to take germs seriously, so God's people must learn to "purify themselves" for God.
The uncleanness rules of Leviticus are outmoded because of Jesus' declaration that all things are clean (Mark 7:19; see also Acts 10:9-16). But the lessons behind these rules remain valid. God still may not be approached carelessly. Each person must examine his or her life, to be certain that God's purity is not violated.
Until Jesus' day, the slow spread of uncleanness seemed irreversible. You could avoid it, but you could not get rid of it. Contact with anything unclean made you unclean yourself. Naturally, certain diseases, notably leprosy, were twice cursed: they were both dangerous and unclean. You kept away from leprosy, absolutely.
Then Jesus touched a man with leprosy, and he became clean. Jesus touched a woman suffering from internal bleeding, and she was healed. For the first time, cleanness rather than uncleanness spread. The rules of Leviticus tell how to avoid uncleanness. Contact with Jesus, however, changes the unclean to clean. Life Questions: Suppose sin were visible--small green spots that break out on the skin. Do you think it would help people to take sin more seriously?
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Leviticus 13:17
Victims of leprosy, or Hansen's disease, have endured untold suffering because earlier versions of the Bible translated as "leprosy" the Hebrew word for "infectious skin disease" mentioned in this chapter. The symptoms described here have little to do with leprosy, a disease of the nerves--not skin--which is barely contagious.
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
Leviticus 11:47
Scholars have long puzzled over the seemingly arbitrary division between "clean" and "unclean" foods. Why permit the eating of certain fish but not shrimp, and cows but not pigs? "An Invisible Danger," page 000, discusses some of the theories that have been proposed. Probably the best explanation is that God was indeed being arbitrary, in order to form a nation different from any other (see 20:26). In Acts 10 God shows there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the animals labelled "unclean" in Leviticus.
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
UNCLEAN, UNCLEANNESS (Heb. tumah, uncleanness, defilement, niddah, separation, impurity, erwah, erwath davar, unclean things, tame, defiled unclean, tame, to make or declare unclean, Gr. akatharsia, miasmos, pollution, akathartos, unclean, koinoo, to defile, miano, to defile, molyno, to make filthy, spiloo, phtheiro, to corrupt). All Israel's restricted foods, unlike those of some other nations, involved the flesh of animals--differentiating the clean from the unclean mammals (Lev 11:1-8, 26-28), sea creatures (11:9-12), birds (11:13-25), and creeping things (11:29-38). Nothing that died of itself was fit for their food, nor were they to eat anything strangled. Blood was a forbidden part of their diet.
A dead person, regardless of the cause of death, made anyone who touched the body unclean (Num 19:22). Likewise anything the body touched (19:22) or the enclosure in which the person died was made unclean (19:14-19). Those who touched the carcass of an animal became unclean (Lev 11:24-28). Certain types of creeping things that died made anything they touched unclean. Some objects thus touched could be cleansed by washing, whereas others had to be destroyed (11:29-37).
Leprosy, being a type of sin, was looked on as unclean whether it was in people, houses, or clothing. God required the person pronounced leprous by the priest to identify himself in a prescribed manner and to separate himself from the rest of the people. Any time anyone drew near to him, he was to cry "Unclean, unclean." Since this disease was also very contagious, detailed instructions were given for dealing with it (Lev 13-15).
Whatever the seminal fluid that issued from the body touched became unclean. This applied also to certain other kinds of issues (Lev 15:1-33). Childbirth made a woman unclean, and special instructions were given for cleansing (ch. 13).
In the NT one notes the cumbersome systems of defilement developed by the scribes and Pharisees, which Jesus condemned. Only four restrictions were placed on the new believers (Acts 15:28-29). In the New Testament era, uncleanness has become moral, not ceremonial.
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
