The Lord said to Moses, “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. If a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her menstrual period. On the eighth day the boy’s foreskin must be circumcised. After waiting thirty-three days, she will be purified from the bleeding of childbirth. During this time of purification, she must not touch anything that is set apart as holy. And she must not enter the sanctuary until her time of purification is over. If a woman gives birth to a daughter, she will be ceremonially unclean for two weeks, just as she is unclean during her menstrual period. After waiting sixty-six days, she will be purified from the bleeding of childbirth. [Leviticus 12.1-5]
I have a dear friend from days gone by who, when reading this passage of scripture, found great disdain with the apparent discrimination regarding the prescribed ceremonial cleanliness after childbirth dependent upon the gender of the child.
I must agree that the passage seems discriminatory in nature however not unlike much of the Bible in regard to gender issues.
I wonder though, in these hard-to-comprehend-their-meaning scriptures if we might find Jesus? Otherwise, we are left to speculate why this apparent discrimination is what it is.
I could imagine, physically speaking, that the presence of blood in childbirth, as it relates to the female anatomy could have some bearing on the doubled time period for purification after the birth of that gender. As contact with blood had certain affect upon the ceremonial cleanliness of a person, it makes sense that childbirth would render a woman ceremonially "unclean" by those standards. If, however, the child born is also female, that same presence of blood would have the same anatomical tendencies as with the mother - plainly put, a vagina in which blood could be present. And, since the female child could not possibly know or perform ceremonial purification protocol, the duty for that rests with the mother to stand-in for the child. It is in this role of the mother that we see Christ as the stand-in for our purification!
As regards the male child born, there is a much different process of purification. The little fellow has the foreskin of his penis severed from his body! I would conjecture that 'mother' cannot stand-in for the boy for two reasons: one, the anatomical difference renders 'mother' unable to perform an anatomically duplicate stand-in substitution, and, two, the analogous picture of the male experiencing the removal of physical parts represents the burden upon the male gender to identify himself and his own family as set apart for God. In other words, it falls upon the man to lead his family into a relationship with God. As further conjecture on my part, I believe it could be seen that the shedding of blood in the male circumcision event could also be representative of Christ shedding blood for our salvation.
For what its worth, I did not consort with any 'outside' reference sources for my input here, so, more likely than not, I could be sorely mistaken in my uneducated conjectures. However, I feel good about at least seeing Christ through the 'substitution' analogies!
Father, I want to grow in my understanding of the Bible. While I am ashamed it has taken me so long to really even look for Jesus in the Old Testament (as He Himself said the Scriptures all pointed to Him), I am nonetheless grateful that in this one instance I have recognized Christ! Thank You!
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