Biblion Bible Commentary
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After Childbirth
Leviticus 12:1-8
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, · WEB
A mother is separated for a period after birth and brings an offering, and the law's last provision is for the woman who cannot afford it.
The chapter is eight verses long and it has caused more offense than almost anything else in the book, so it should be read carefully.
A woman is unclean seven days after bearing a son and continues in the blood of purification thirty-three days Leviticus 12:4; for a daughter the periods are doubled Leviticus 12:5.
Nothing in the passage calls childbirth sinful. The category is the same one that covers contact with a corpse, a discharge, or a skin condition — the boundaries of life and death, where blood is involved. Every one of those makes a person unclean, and none of them is a moral fault.
What the period actually produces is worth stating plainly. For forty or eighty days a new mother is exempt from every religious obligation, may not be required at the sanctuary, and is not to be touched for ritual purposes. In a society where women's work was unrelenting, the law hands her a protected convalescence with divine authority behind it.
The doubling for a daughter is not explained anywhere in Scripture, and no explanation should be manufactured. What can be observed is that the offering at the end is identical for both Leviticus 12:7 — this is the law for her who bears, whether a male or a female — so whatever the different periods mark, it is not a difference in the child's standing before God.
The circumcision of a son on the eighth day Leviticus 12:3 is placed inside the mother's law, and it is the only positive commandment in the chapter.
At the end she brings a lamb and a bird. And then, as everywhere in this book: if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons Leviticus 12:8.
That provision is the reason this obscure chapter is quoted in the Gospels. When Mary came to the temple she brought a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons Luke 2:24 — the poor woman's rate. The family of Jesus could not afford the lamb, and the law had made sure that did not matter.
settled What this mark means