Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

These are food laws. Moral ones, not health ones. We as human beings were designed to live on plants and fruit. Period (Genesis 1:29). But after the flood we were given permission to eat flesh (Genesis 9:3-4), but not the blood. Healthwise both were now permitted. As far as HEALTH is concerned, that has never been revoked. We only NEED plants and fruit, but we are ALLOWED anything. That’s health, so it should all be within reason and with good stewardship and exercise and all of that. BUT none of these laws address that. These are MORAL laws.

What does that mean? It means that they were designed to make the Israelites different and separate from those nations around them. Like ALL the Law, they were written BY God from GOD’S position. While I thoroughly believe they all had reasons, I don’t understand them all. But that isn’t the important thing. They were to be followed because God said so. They were in one way designed to teach trusting in God in spite of human thinking. They were all symbolic shadows (Colossians 2:16-17).

As believers in Jesus and partakers of His Covenant, we are freed from following these rules. Just as we enjoy a perpetual Sabbath and no longer need to keep a single day as Sabbath, we do not have any foods that are unclean. All things are permitted to us. But as 1 Corinthians 10:23 teaches us, not everything is beneficial to us. Just because we CAN doesn’t mean we SHOULD. It’s only that the Law aspect doesn’t apply. If we eat pork it’s really unhealthy, but we won’t have transgressed a law. We are free to do it.

For the Israelites, though, they were under Law and these were restrictions. If they had split hooves and chewed cud (both things, not just one), they could eat them. Anything else wasn’t to be eaten and you were unclean if you touched the corpse. If it had fins and scales (river or ocean or lake) you could eat it. Everything else, nope. Insects with four legs with joints above their feet (like locusts) were okay. Nothing else. Birds were easier to list what was a no: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, the kite, the falcon, the raven, the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, the hawk, the little owl, the fisher owl, the screech owl, the white owl, the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron, the hoopoe, and the bat. They were no.

How serious was the no? Serious. It was an abomination to go against these rules. Plus, if you touched their carcasses you were unclean. You couldn’t bring a sacrifice to get into the tabernacle if you were unclean. We next get a list of all the different ways it counted as having touched and being unclean. It was a LOT. It was DETAILED. It was meant to drum into them the idea that uncleanliness was serious. God was righteous. If you were even a little teeny, weeny bit out of line you were not worthy of coming into His presence. One of the reasons for the Law was to make sin stronger so we would see that we ALL have fallen short. Even a little bit. NO ONE is exempt. We NEED a Saviour because we CANNOT do it on our own. There’s just NO way.

“because I am Yahweh your God, and you must keep yourselves sanctified, so that you shall be holy, because I am holy. And you must not make yourselves unclean with any swarmer that moves along on the land, because I am Yahweh, who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be for you as God. Thus you shall be holy, because I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44-45)

Next are rules about ritual uncleanliness – not goodness or worth. This is about whether or not you can interact with the tabernacle and sacrificial system freely or with restrictions or not at all. As with all things regarding the tabernacle, anything to do with blood brought about ritual uncleanliness and ritual consecration.

If a woman gave birth to a boy, she was ritually unclean seven days and on the eighth the boy was to be circumcised. For 33 more days, she is unable to participate in the tabernacle or touch anything holy. If it was a girl, these days were doubled and there was no circumcision (girls do not possess the requisite piece of extra skin on the penis or ceremonial need for circumcision in ANY way).

Why the difference in days? I’m not sure. God must have had a reason. He is the one who created the laws. Man did not, so it can’t be because of human cultural views of women or the patriarchy or anything like that. There was a divine reason. Perhaps it was because girls are larger and it takes longer to recover from a female birth. Perhaps it was because female babies can menstruate during that time and that would render the mother ritually unclean for a time anyway. Perhaps it was for a completely different reason humanity hasn’t thought of yet. Perhaps it was another opportunity to learn to trust Him in spite of not entirely understanding the rules. Whatever it is, the law was laid down by God according to His morals and not a human mind according to human ideals and values.

Once the period of time was over, she needed to bring a sacrifice to make atonement with blood. She was to bring a lamb or a turtledove or pigeon for a burnt offering; and a turtledove or a pigeon as a sin offering. If she can’t get a lamb – for any reason – she could bring two pigeons or turtledoves. One for each type of offering (burnt and sin). Everyone had something to bring to get cleansed. When she did so, she was atoned for and able to come before God again.

Summary

Key Players: God, Mothers

Key Themes: Clean/Unclean Foods, Ritual Cleanliness

Key Verse(s): Leviticus 11:1-2, 44-47; 12:8