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Leviticus 11-15: Unclean Foods, Diseases, and Emissions

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Why were pigs unclean, but sheep were clean? Do we still have to eat kosher today? Do the purity laws devalue women? Despite what you may think, this difficult section of text has a lot to show us about the Gospel of Jesus.

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Clean and Unclean: How Leviticus 11–15 Points to Jesus

Show Notes

David Bowden and Seth Stewart, hosts of the Spoken Gospel podcast, walk through one of the most culturally challenging sections of the Bible---Leviticus 11–15---and uncover how its laws about food, childbirth, skin diseases, and bodily discharges all point forward to the good news of Jesus.

Why Cleanliness and Uncleanliness Matter

Before diving into the specific laws, it is important to understand two sets of categories that run throughout Leviticus: clean and unclean, and holy and common. Holy things are set apart for God---his presence, the artifacts in the tabernacle, and the priests who serve there. Common things are not evil; they are simply ordinary, not dedicated to God's use. Meanwhile, clean and unclean do not map neatly onto sinful and sinless. Something unclean is not necessarily morally wrong. You can become unclean just through the normal activity of life.

What matters is that unclean things cannot enter God's holy presence. If you want to interact with the holy God, you must first be clean. This is the driving question behind every law in Leviticus 11–15: How can people who live in a broken, Death-stained world remain in God's presence? These laws are not about earning salvation. God had already rescued Israel out of Egypt. Instead, they are a response to that rescue---a way of remembering and reflecting the uniqueness of a God who chose to dwell among his people.

The Food Laws and God's Sovereign Choice

Leviticus 11 outlines what Israel could and could not eat, organized by the same categories found in Genesis 1: land animals, sea creatures, birds, and insects. Cloven-hooved, cud-chewing animals were clean. Fish with both fins and scales were permitted. Most birds of prey and carrion eaters were off-limits. Hopping insects could be eaten, but not flying ones. And any animal that died on its own in the wild was entirely off the table.

Many explanations have been offered for why God chose these particular animals---health and hygiene, allegorical lessons about character, social distinctiveness, or limiting death in the world. While there may be traces of truth in some of these proposals, the text itself gives a clear reason. Leviticus 11:44–47 declares that the purpose is holiness: "I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy." God chose these animals and not others for the same reason he chose Israel and not other nations---to make a distinction. Every meal became a retelling of the Exodus. Every time an Israelite ate cow instead of pork, or this bird instead of that one, it was because God brought them out of the land of Egypt. The food laws turned eating into an act of worship and remembrance.

This interpretation is confirmed by the way Jesus and the apostles handled these laws. In Mark 7, Jesus told the Pharisees that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile them---it is what comes out of the heart that defiles. Mark's Gospel adds the stunning editorial note: "Thus he declared all foods clean." Jesus was not abolishing the purpose of the food laws; he was revealing their deepest meaning. Holiness starts in the heart, not on the plate. Then in Acts 10, Peter received a vision of a sheet descending from heaven filled with every kind of animal, clean and unclean, and heard the command: "Rise, Peter. Kill and eat." When Peter resisted, God rebuked him: "Do not call anything I have made clean, unclean." Peter soon realized the vision was not just about diet. It was about people. The food laws had been a foreshadowing of the distinction between chosen and unchosen, Jew and Gentile. Now, through the Gospel, that wall was coming down. The Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles in Cornelius's house just as he had on the Jewish believers at Pentecost. The distinction the food laws symbolized had been fulfilled in Jesus, who made a way for all nations to enter God's household.

Childbirth and the Promise of New Life

Leviticus 12 addresses the ritual uncleanliness connected to childbirth. After bearing a son, a mother was unclean for seven days, followed by 33 additional days of purification. After bearing a daughter, the total purification period was doubled---14 days of uncleanliness and 66 additional days.

On the surface, the longer period for a daughter can feel like a devaluation of women. But the logic of the text actually moves in the opposite direction. When a mother bears a daughter, she produces a double measure of life, because that daughter will one day have her own capacity to bear children---and with that capacity, her own future periods of ritual uncleanliness. The mother is not penalized for having a girl; she takes her daughter's future uncleanliness upon herself, cleansing on her behalf. It is a redemptive, almost priestly role, not a degrading one.

Meanwhile, the son's additional atonement comes through circumcision on the eighth day. The seven-day pattern echoes the seven days of creation, and the eighth day marks the beginning of new life in the covenant community. Both paths---circumcision for the son and extended purification for the daughter---require additional atonement for the new child. Both are tied to the reproductive promise that would ultimately lead to the Messiah. Through Eve, the promise of a deliverer was given (Genesis 3:15), and the woman's redemptive role in bearing life is honored here, not diminished. These laws reminded every Israelite family, at the birth of every child, that God had saved them from Egypt and that through their offspring, he would continue to fulfill his promises.

Skin Diseases, Mold, and the Weight of Living in a Broken World

Chapters 13 and 14 address what is often translated as "leprosy," though the Hebrew term covers a wide range of skin conditions, fungal infections, and even mold in clothing and houses. This is not a diagnosis of what modern medicine calls leprosy. It is a category of infectious disease and decay that could affect persons, garments, and dwellings alike.

When a suspicious condition appeared, the priest was called to examine it using a detailed rubric provided by God. If the condition met certain criteria, the person, garment, or house was declared unclean. If it was ambiguous, the priest quarantined the situation for seven days and examined it again. If the condition resolved, purification rituals and sacrifices were offered. If it did not, the consequences were severe: the person was cast out of the camp, the clothing was burned, and the house was torn down. Leviticus 13:45–46 captures the emotional weight of this reality: the afflicted person wore torn clothes, left their hair loose, covered their mouth, cried out "Unclean, unclean," and lived alone outside the camp.

It is critical to understand that these sacrifices and quarantine measures do not imply that each sick person sinned to earn their affliction. Jesus himself addressed this assumption directly, insisting that disease is not evidence of personal guilt (John 9:2–3). Disease exists because the whole world is under the dominion of Sin and Death. Our bodies decay not because of individual moral failures but because we live east of Eden. The sickness visible on a person's skin is an outward picture of how broken and unclean the entire world is. And the sacrifices required for cleansing point to the pattern that would run through all of Scripture: the world itself will be made clean through sacrifice.

Jesus, the Priest Who Trades Places with the Unclean

The Gospels record Jesus repeatedly encountering people with skin diseases---in Luke 5, Matthew 8, and Mark 1. Each time, he does something remarkable. He touches the untouchable, heals the afflicted person immediately, declares them clean, and then sends them to the priest to offer the sacrifice prescribed in Leviticus. By declaring a person clean, Jesus was assuming the priestly authority that belonged to Aaron and his descendants. And by healing instantly, he compressed the seven-day waiting period of new creation into a single moment. Jesus acted as the true priest, performing a work of new creation in a person's body and pronouncing them clean without delay.

But the most stunning detail appears in Mark 1. After healing the man with the skin disease, Jesus told him to tell no one. The man went into the city, into the temple, announcing what God had done. Meanwhile, the text says Jesus went out to the desolate, lonely places---outside the camp, exactly where the unclean person had been forced to live. Jesus traded places with him. The one who was isolated and crying "Unclean" now stood clean in God's presence, while the holy Son of God took on the exile. This is the pattern of the Gospel in miniature: Jesus, who was crucified outside the city walls (Hebrews 13:12), took the place of the unclean so that those who trust him could walk boldly into the presence of God. The tabernacle did not wait for the unclean to come to it. In Jesus, the presence of God came out to the unclean and made them whole.

Bodily Discharges and the Promise of Final Rest

The final section, Leviticus 15, covers various bodily discharges---including emissions of semen, menstruation, and prolonged or abnormal bleeding. For most of these, the remedy was simple: wash, wait until evening or for seven days depending on the circumstance, and you were clean again. Some required a sacrifice on the eighth day. The point was not to shame normal biological processes. It was to show that even the most ordinary functions of the human body carry the mark of living in a world under the curse. Leviticus 15:31 makes the purpose explicit: "You shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanliness, lest they die in their uncleanliness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst."

The recurring pattern of seven days of waiting followed by cleansing on the eighth day echoes creation itself and builds an expectation. One day, there will be a final Sabbath rest, and God's people will wake up on the other side of it to find everything clean. This is why Jesus is called the Lord of the Sabbath. And it is why the story of the woman with the issue of blood in Matthew 9 is so powerful. She had been bleeding for 12 years---perpetually unclean, perpetually excluded. When she touched Jesus, the seven days of new creation collapsed into a single instant. She was healed. And Jesus said to her, "Your faith has made you well." Leviticus was never about doing a list of rituals to get back into God's good graces. It was about trusting the God who saves. The woman's trust in Jesus accomplished what 12 years of uncleanliness could not. In Jesus, the whole broken, decaying, oozing reality of life in a fallen world meets the God of life---and life wins.

Transcript

Intro: [gentle music] Welcome to the Spoken Gospel podcast. This is our attempt to speak the gospel out of every corner of scripture. We believe every part of the Bible, Old Testament and New, is about Jesus, and this podcast is our experiment to publicly test that belief. Let's jump in. [upbeat music]

David: Well, hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Spoken Gospel podcast.

Seth: Spoken Gospel.

David: Here it is. This is it.

Seth: I went to the dentist.

David: You went to the dentist? I thought your wife went to the dentist.

Seth: She did too. We both did.

David: Oh.

Seth: And I have problems.

David: Oh, no.

Seth: [laughs] Like, all the... Listeners, the front three teeth of mine are all fake.

David: [laughs] Teeth of mine.

Seth: [laughs]

David: Not your front thr- front three teeth.

Seth: Oh.

David: The front three teeth of mine. [laughs]

Seth: They're all fake because I had a longboarding accident-

David: Yes, you did

Seth: ... where I hit the-

David: You fell off

Seth: ... hit the ground with my face f- before my hands. So-

David: That's not a... It's, that's the wrong order.

Seth: That's the wrong order.

David: [laughs]

Seth: And so, like, they're all fake. And so apparently, like, the way that it was structured, like, it means I can't, like, floss in certain spaces. I don't floss anyway, so, you know.

David: [laughs]

Seth: It doesn't matter. Even if I did floss, it wouldn't fix the problem, but essentially, I have a cavity on the root of my tooth-

David: Oh

Seth: ... in the gums.

David: No.

Seth: So it's like you have to, like... I was like, "Is that expensive to fix?" And she just looked at me-

David: Oh

Seth: ... had these big eyes, and just shook her head.

David: Oh, just shook-

Seth: Yeah. [laughs]

David: Yes. Oh, that's terrible.

Seth: So-

David: Oh

Seth: ... my teeth are now unclean. [laughs]

David: You are... Which is a perfect segue-

Seth: segue [laughs]

David: ... into today's section on cleanliness and uncleanliness.

Seth: Clean and unclean things.

David: That's right.

Seth: Bodies, animals, people-

David: Right

Seth: ... houses.

David: 'Cause it, yeah, if you'll remember, at the end of the last section, chapter 10, um, you know, God said to, um, Aaron that-

Seth: Aaron is c- declaring-

David: Right

Seth: ... a type of worship clean or unclean-

David: Right

Seth: ... based on whether you're grieving or not.

David: Right.

Seth: And Aaron, as the high priest, is able to call things clean and unclean. He does it for the first time, and this whole section begins with a whole bunch of laws about what's clean and what's unclean.

David: That's right. So it makes sense in the kinda textual flow of the, the passage. Uh, and the outline's pretty simple. So we kinda have, like, just here's different things that can be clean and unclean. You have foods in chapter 11-

Seth: Right

David: ... animals, what to eat, what not to eat. You've got in, in, in chapter 12, like, childbirth, right?

Seth: Yes.

David: Uh, in 13 and 14, you have, like, skin and fungal diseases.

Seth: Fungal.

David: Fungal.

Seth: I, I forget about the word fungal.

David: Fungal. It's a fun word.

Seth: [laughs]

David: I don't know. Uh, and then 15 is-

Seth: You been hanging out in the dark?

David: Uh, I have. [laughs]

Seth: It's, you have?

David: Yeah.

Seth: [laughs]

David: It's a, it's a fun thing.

Seth: Are, are you a fun guy?

David: I'm a fun guy.

Seth: When you're in the dark. [laughs]

David: Anyway, and then chapter 15, uh, the last section is bodily discharges.

Seth: Ooh, yum.

David: Which is a gross combination of words. [laughs]

Seth: Bodily dis-

David: Bodily discharges. Um, but anyway, um, so this is already going to be a culturally difficult, uh, setting, like, like, like, piece of text to resonate with as 21st century people.

Seth: Right. We don't really have concepts of cleanliness or unclean- cleanliness outside of, like, germs.

David: Right. Yeah.

Seth: So it's like-

David: So it's always, like, it's always medical for us.

Seth: Right.

David: So if something's unclean, it's because it's germy.

Seth: Yeah, and even if it's not... Like, I'm thinking of, like, I kinda maybe had, I probably had OCD as a child.

David: Okay.

Seth: It's more than likely I did. N- never diagnosed. I'm diagnosing myself now.

David: Okay, yeah.

Seth: But I would, like, wash my hands constantly after just touching random things because I was just afraid of the possibility of germs.

David: Oh, I see.

Seth: So I think there's a lot of people who have a fear or phobia of things being clean and unclean, and have a desire to purify themselves or clean themselves, even if it's not necessarily-

David: Sure

Seth: ... harmful.

David: Right.

Seth: But that's not what we're talking about.

David: No, we're talking about ritual purity. So, like-

Seth: That's right

David: ... are you clean is the question that has to be asked, because only clean things can come and-

Seth: Live in God's presence

David: ... yeah, can come and interact with holiness. So there's, uh, we, we need to realize-

Seth: So rem- remember too, 'cause I think we, I wanna keep reminding our listeners and myself is that it's not that, like, we're trying to earn our way into God's presence-

David: Right

Seth: ... by cleaning ourselves up. God's presence already resides in Israel.

David: That's right.

Seth: And if you want to continue to live in God's presence, if you wanna remain close to life, light, and pur- purity, here's what needs to be accomplished. And the same is true of the entire world today. We live in God's presence, and if we want to continue to live in His presence to eternity, here's what it looks like, um, with certain commands, certain beliefs-

David: Right

Seth: ... et cetera.

David: Yeah.

Seth: So.

David: Yes, that's a good, that's a good note, I think. A- and so what we need to realize as we, as, and remember as we are reading Leviticus is there are these two sets of, um, dichotomies, kind of. These two sets of two.

Seth: Okay.

David: Okay, so there's clean and unclean.

Seth: Right, right.

David: Right? And then there's holy and common.

Seth: Okay.

David: So those are two words that are gonna, or four words and two sets-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... that are gonna pop up over and over and over again. And so, um, holy and common is talking about something that's wholly set apart for God. It is God's presence. It's the artifacts in the temple. It's, um, the, it's, it's blood that's dedicated to God. It's all these-

Seth: It could be a priest

David: ... it could be a priest-

Seth: Right, yeah

David: ... who's holy, it, after going through certain rituals. And so holy things are God's things.

Seth: Like, unique and separate, apart for God's-

David: Yes

Seth: ... use.

David: That's right.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Yeah. And, uh, and then common things aren't necessarily evil, they're just not holy.

Seth: Right.

David: It just means, like, they're like a normal thing out in the world.

Seth: Yeah, this is not a true version of this-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... but, like, a lot of people think of the church building, like when you're inside it-

David: Oh, as a holy place

Seth: ... as holy, as a holy place.

David: Right.

Seth: But the building, the shopping center next door to it-

David: Is unholy, or is, is-

Seth: Is unho-

David: ... is common.

Seth: Is common.

David: Common.

Seth: Right.

David: We're not saying unholy, we're saying common.

Seth: Common.

David: Is what the word, is the word Leviticus uses.

Seth: And I actually had a really, uh, interesting experience with this when I was in Kenya.

David: Oh, okay.

Seth: Um, we were, um, meeting with some, a bunch of Kenyans out there. We were talking, and they were talking about this church. They were asking me a question. So they said, "We know this church in town that meets in this building, um, and that it is a nightclub at night, but it rents it out during the, on Sunday mornings when nobody uses it to be a church."

David: Whoa.

Seth: "What do you think about this?"

David: [laughs]

Seth: Oh, well, that's fine.

David: Yeah.

Seth: That's totally f- I mean-

David: Super cool, actually

Seth: ... that's, that's really kinda cool.

David: Yeah.

Seth: I was like, I was like, "I think that's good because they're like, you know, they're in the city doing all this stuff." And they said, "Oh, no, no, that's terrible."

David: Oh. [laughs]

Seth: I was like, "What?" He's like, "That place is unholy."

David: Oh.

Seth: "That place..." And the- they had this really strong category for like, "This place is polluted-

David: Right

Seth: ... and ugly-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... and it cannot be redeemed, and you should not be putting-

David: Mm

Seth: ... sacred and holy things in it." And so somebody had to, to, to inform me later, like there's a, we have, like time, space, time-space things, like something that has an unholy timestamp from minute marker five to minute marker seven where you scrub it because you shouldn't be watching that as a Christian.

David: Oh, right, right, right. You skip over the-

Seth: You skip over that

David: ... the sex scene.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Right.

Seth: Or in, uh, like a place is being used for, as a nightclub. Like, well, at midnight or 3:00 AM, it closes, and it's not used for illicit things anymore.

David: Right.

Seth: And we can use it as a church, and it's fine.

David: Yeah.

Seth: God redeems those things. For them, there's this sense of like a holy space-

David: Space, yeah

Seth: ... that doesn't transfer without being cleansed or purified in some way.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And so that, that helped me understand-

David: That's cool

Seth: ... the Book of Levit- Leviticus-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... actually a lot better because like, oh, there's this concept of a holy space that can't interact with unholy things.

David: Right.

Seth: Anyway.

David: No, that's really good. And so that's the difference between holy and common. And then what we have to realize between clean and unclean is it doesn't mean necessarily good and evil. That's not what we're talking about here.

Seth: Right.

David: We're not talk- and we're not talking about, like s- like sinful and sinless. It's, it, it's not even necessarily always a sin thing that's happening.

Seth: It's just some-

David: You can, you can become unclean just through the normal activity of life.

Seth: And does unclean equal holy?

David: No. No, no, no.

Seth: Okay.

David: So something, just because something is clean does not mean it's holy, but something that is holy is always clean.

Seth: Okay. [laughs]

David: And so what that means is, is that you have to be-

Seth: We need a Venn diagram. [laughs]

David: I know, you really do. [laughs] Uh, and so really, all, all it means is that something unclean can never be holy, and something that's holy must be clean.

Seth: Okay.

David: So if you want to interact with the holy, you must first be clean.

Seth: So does that mean that you're more concerned with what's common and what's unclean, not as a way to say, "Oh, these people are-

David: Are bad

Seth: ... are bad and should be separated," although in the case of leprosy, that's a little bit different.

David: Yes.

Seth: That's more like quar- like medical quarantine.

David: It's more of a quarantine.

Seth: But like, so it's more about, like if you want to interact with God's pr- closely in God's presence, you need to be clean in order to enter into holiness.

David: Yes. And so that, and that's what this is all about.

Seth: Okay.

David: We cannot forget this, or we will get lost in the weeds. Uh, it will become uninteresting, and then we will end up drawing incorrect conclusions about what Leviticus and the holy laws are about. Because the whole thing about being clean is so that we can be with God. It's the whole reason we wanna be clean. So-

Seth: Why does God c- care about a... 'Cause what we're about to read is what seems like a list of arbitrary laws. Don't eat this.

David: Right.

Seth: Don't eat that.

David: Yep.

Seth: This skin condition, that skin condition, whether or not you had kids in the last month or so. Like, it seems fairly arbitrary. God doesn't need to make these laws.

David: Yep.

Seth: And in fact, after Jesus, he has none of these laws [laughs] to-

David: Right

Seth: ... in order that we come into his holiness. So why does God care about cleanliness-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... at all?

David: Yeah.

Seth: Interact, or uncleanliness as it relates to-

David: Right

Seth: ... coming into his temple. Surely it shouldn't just be, it, it's like just sin. If you're sinning, if you're evil, if you're-

David: Right

Seth: ... doing wrong things, you can't come in.

David: Yeah.

Seth: Why is cleanliness, uncleanliness a thing?

David: It's a huge question. Um, I mean, the first answer that pops into my head is the answer that I would say is right before this section, when God talks about how he will be sanctified among his people, and then among all people he will be glorified, which we talked about in the last episode-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... is that God is showing himself as fundamentally different by showing that his people are fundamentally different, that they are set apart, they are different, they, they are doing different things, they look different, they act different, they eat differently, they treat, uh, disease differently, uh, they treat, you know, just normal things like birth differently. It's to set them apart in order to show that this God, Yahweh, is different from the Canaanite gods or the-

Seth: Right

David: ... Midianite gods or whomever.

Seth: And he says this after all of the food laws, too. Verse 44, chapter 11, he says, "I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourself. Make yourselves unique.

David: Yes.

Seth: Make yourselves holy, because, uh, therefore, and be holy for I am holy."

David: That's it.

Seth: "You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing, but for I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." Because I have rescued you, I want you to be unique like I'm unique.

David: Right.

Seth: I was uniquely, I uniquely saved you.

David: Yes.

Seth: So uniquely respond to me. And it's not so much, it's like, one, he, he's already saved them, so all these purity laws are not to buy some sort of salvation from God.

David: Mm-hmm.

Seth: It's a response to that salvation and saying, "I want you to look like me in some way. I want you-

David: Right

Seth: ... to be holy and unique." And all these food laws and all these different things, it's not so much about the food necessarily. It's about you looking different from the surrounding world because I am a different type of god from any of the competing gods out there.

David: Right. And so that's, that's one big part of it. But then why these types of laws that we're gonna get into kind of answers the second part of that question that you're asking of why cleanliness, why is it important, and I think that has to do with, um, what, what do these, what do these laws tell us about God and about his people and about, uh, humanity and how humanity's different from divinity. Um, I think that's just, uh, really important. So, like, a lot of, a lot of the, the laws have to do at least tangentially with, like life and death.

Seth: Right. Right, right, right.

David: And, and, and that's a really important theme here in that we have to remember that, I mean, we're still in the Torah.And so if you've been reading this through as a narrative, as one should-

Seth: Right, right, right

David: ... you, you have the curse, uh, ringing in your ears from Genesis 3, and that death entered the world through Adam. And so all men and all women, all humanity, the whole Earth, in fact, i- including, you know, vegetation and animal life, is under this curse of death. Everything has a timestamp on it now. Everything's gonna end and expire. And so death is winning. Things are dying. And so, but God is a God of life, and he's eternal, and he doesn't die. And so he's saying that there's these things, like the discharges of blood, right?

Seth: Right, right, right.

David: Is, is, like, like, blood coming out of your body or emissions of fluids are usually thing... When, when fluids leave your body-

Seth: Right

David: ... it's usually a bad thing.

Seth: Right.

David: It's like you're dying.

Seth: Yeah.

David: You know, uh, whenever you eat an animal, it has to die in order for you to live.

Seth: Right.

David: Whenever there's a birth, there's new life kind of, like, conquering the, conquering death for a second, but you're still discharging blood, so there's that tension of life and death.

Seth: Yeah.

David: All this is happening, right? And it sh- right

Seth: And what was used to create life, the u- the womb, the placenta-

David: That's right

Seth: ... that's also dying and-

David: Yes

Seth: ... starts to decay almost as soon as it comes out.

David: Exactly.

Seth: Like, it's all mixed together.

David: And so God is trying to show us something about, um, the death that is in our world, and he's trying to show us that we are still under a curse. Like, the whole world, just by living in it, we become unclean because we are all under a curse. And so that's why a lot of the things we'll see here aren't necessarily sinful things that God is telling us not to do. It's just the normal course of being a human, and through the normal course of being a human, we are not worthy to enter into God's presence. And so that's all he's trying to show us is that you-

Seth: Right

David: ... as you are cannot come into my presence because you're all under a curse of death.

Seth: So the purpose of the moral purity laws is to show us that things like the food we eat, the way we have children, the way our homes are structured, the diseases that we have in our body, all of these things are stained by sin and death, and that happens in the natural flow of life. And God is saying, and one way to be unique and to be holy is to... or, man, like, 'cause death automatically, in my mind, I automatically think of sin.

David: Right.

Seth: But, like, in sense, if it's a curse of sin, it's a by-product of sin, but not necessarily sin itself.

David: We have to understand sin as two different things. There is sin that we commit, and then there is p- sin as a dominion or a power.

Seth: Right. The fact that my body is decaying right now-

David: Is a, is the result of the dominion of sin and death in the world.

Seth: Right.

David: Not necessarily the fact-

Seth: The fact that I have a cavity in my root [laughs]

David: Yes, exactly

Seth: ... is not because I sinned-

David: Right

Seth: ... and caused it to come there.

David: Yes. You just live in a fallen world.

Seth: Right.

David: And you do fallen things, but those are two different things, and if we try to push them together, we're gonna end up, especially when we talk about things like leprosy, we're gonna end up really confused. And so we have to make sure we understand that there is the dominion of sin and death that's over this world, causing things to decay, causing things to go down, and God is entering this world saying, "Come into clean- cleanliness. Come into life." But then there are active things that we do-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... which will need sin offerings and things like that, and we'll talk about how all those overlap.

Seth: But for now, then, so what we're really dealing with is, like, okay, this is the dominion of sin, the kingdom of sin, just the fallen effects because we exist in a world that's broken.

David: Right.

Seth: How do we, as people who are always tending towards entropy and chaos-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... and brokenness, come into God's presence?

David: Yep.

Seth: How do we remain in God's presence?

David: And that's the question that these purity laws are gonna try to answer, and so, uh, let's look at them one section at a time. [gentle music] All right, so, uh, now let's talk about the clean and unclean animals, things you can eat and can't eat. So you can't eat a tawny owl. [laughs]

Seth: My favorite owl. [laughs]

David: Too bad. Off the menu.

Seth: [laughs]

David: No tawny owls for you. Um, and so this, uh, th- this section is, is strange for a lot of people. It's also probably one of the most famous laws. You know, it's like-

Seth: Right

David: ... Jews can't eat pigs. Like-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... everyone knows that. And, and-

Seth: 'Cause bacon is delicious

David: ... 'cause bacon is too good, and it must be sinful.

Seth: [laughs]

David: No. Uh, and so, like, just as an overview here, let, let me just kind of, like, like, go through the, the major groupings, right?

Seth: Well, yeah. The really easy one, it's like you have the land animals.

David: Uh-huh.

Seth: You have the sea animals.

David: That's right.

Seth: And you have the, uh, the other ones.

David: The insects.

Seth: The insects. [laughs]

David: Yeah, the other ones.

Seth: The air animals, the air animals.

David: Oh, the birds. Yeah.

Seth: The birds-

David: Right

Seth: ... and the insects and things.

David: Mm-hmm.

Seth: And so you should automatically think back to creation.

David: Creation, yep.

Seth: We're trying to get back to the Garden of Eden. It's the same, uh, categories that you have in the Garden of Eden.

David: That's right.

Seth: Things that creep on the ground, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the animals that walk on the land.

David: That's right. How do I have proper relationship with the world around me? In Eden, everything was properly ordered, and man and animals lived in harmony correctly with God.

Seth: We didn't need to be concerned about cleanliness then-

David: That's right

Seth: ... because it, we were in God's world.

David: We were already there.

Seth: But now that it's broken, how do I interact with each part of God's created order, knowing that eventually it will decay and cause death around me?

David: Right. And so, um, now that eating animals is part of our existence-

Seth: Right

David: ... um, there's rules that God puts in place. And so, like, y- uh, so first, you can, uh, cloven-hooved, cud-chewing land animals may be eaten.

Seth: Yes.

David: Okay? But other mammals-

Seth: My favorite kinds

David: ... but other animals, like ones that would, like, cl- like, part the hoof but not-

Seth: Right

David: ... chew the cud.

Seth: It has to be cloven-hooved and chew the cud.

David: And chew the cud. [laughs]

Seth: Uh, so chew the cud just means, like, chews grass.

David: Right.

Seth: Okay.

David: Yep. Uh, and then, um, two, uh, so fish, w- fish that have fins and scales can be eaten.

Seth: That have both fins?

David: They have to have both fins and scales.

Seth: Okay.

David: Uh, third is for the birds. We're not given the r- like reasons-

Seth: We're not

David: ... or categories.

Seth: We're not.

David: He's just like, "You can't have this one, this one, this one." And, and most, most commentators think that these are birds of prey.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And so-

Seth: And I mean, even your, like, your carrion vultures-

David: That's right

Seth: ... ravens, all ost- I don't know what an ostrich eats.

David: I don't either. But anyway, most likely-

Seth: Have you heard an ostrich make a noise?

David: No. Don't do it.

Seth: Oh my gosh.

David: [laughs]

Seth: Everybody stop the podcast and go to YouTube-

David: [laughs]

Seth: ... and look up the word ostrich no- like, ostrich wail.

David: Oh, no.

Seth: In the Psalms, David will say he cries like an ostrich.

David: Oh.

Seth: And you're like, "What?"

David: And you're like, "What does that sound like?"

Seth: I was like, "What does that sound like?" So I Googled it.

David: Oh, no.

Seth: It is bizarre.

David: That's weird.

Seth: It's like this... Okay.

David: Don't do it.

Seth: It's like-

David: I'm so ner-

Seth: [laughs]

David: It's like this crazy noise. [laughs] And you have to use your whole body to make it as a human. [laughs]

Seth: Oh, I wish everyone could see your face, but I'm the only other person in here.

David: Yeah, this like four-foot, this three-foot neck just balloons out-

Seth: Oh my gosh

David: ... like a, like a water balloon. It's crazy. But it's like that deep, guttural moaning sound that you make when you're in grief. [moans]

Seth: Oh my God. [laughs]

David: Get it? [laughs]

Seth: So there you go. Anyway-

David: Well, fantastic

Seth: ... that's why-

David: Don't eat that bird. Uh, but a lot of people say the-

Seth: The grief bird

David: ... the grief bird because they're, they're associated with death, a lot of them. So like, whether it's carrion, or whether they're birds of prey, again, this is like a life death thing probably. Anyway, then there's insects.

Seth: Probably.

David: I don't know. We don't know 'cause we're not given a reason, so we have to speculate. Um-

Seth: And again, at the end of the day, you don't necessarily need more of a reason than-

David: No

Seth: ... what the text gives you.

David: No, and that's the whole point we're gonna get to. Uh, as I wanna, I wanna keep piling on.

Seth: Keep, keep, keep going, keep going.

David: And so it's like, then there's like insects, and you can eat the hopping insects, but not the flying ones, right? And then there's, uh, swarming animals that you can't eat, and then there's, um, any, any animal that dies.

Seth: Lizards. No lizards.

David: No lizards. Then any animal that just dies out in the wild, no matter what it is, you can't eat because it's just dead, and that's messed up apparently. And so a lot of proposals are out there for w- like how God made these, like these up and what significance they, they have and everything like that. Um, so I'll give you the ones I don't agree with, and then we can talk about-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... what we think. The most common-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... is, uh, I've heard over and over and over again is that God was preventing them from disease or harmful diets-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... and things like that.

Seth: And sometimes it looks like that when it's like a carcass of an animal falls into a whole pile of wet grain.

David: [laughs]

Seth: Like, that makes sense to me that there's like-

David: Right

Seth: ... health things there.

David: Yes.

Seth: And, like, God's concerned about that clearly with the leprosy laws in a second, but, like, that's not the primary thing that's happening.

David: Not at all. Not at all. Um, it, it's just because, like, there was just, there's just not, it's just not true. It's like there's too many-

Seth: Right

David: ... other, there, there's, like he should've, he should've done a lot of other things if he was concerned with health. And so that, that's the, it's the most often one. Other things are, like, allegorization. So it's like, if you think about why, why can't you eat pigs? Well, it's because they wallow in their own filth.

Seth: Oh.

David: And you shouldn't wallow in your own filth-

Seth: Okay

David: ... like, like a pig, so don't eat pigs. Don't eat-

Seth: Right, right, right

David: ... like don't make ostrich noises, so don't eat ostriches, [laughs] you know? Like that whole thing.

Seth: Right, right, right.

David: Then, then, uh, you've already used this word once in this podcast, is, oh, they're arbitrary. They mean nothing.

Seth: Right.

David: And God just said them.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And that could be viewed positively or negatively.

Seth: Right.

David: Like, he just said them, obey them, right?

Seth: Right.

David: Or I don't know, he just did.

Seth: Even when you don't under- and, and it's goes back to what we've-

David: We've talked about this, yes

Seth: ... like even if you don't understand why God commands something, will you trust him when-

David: Right

Seth: ... he says it?

David: Uh, another interesting one I read was it's to limit death. And so it's kinda like to, to reunify with Eden.

Seth: Right.

David: And it's like, uh, don't just kill everything. It's, it, it, and it's also to limit, like, game hunting and stuff like that.

Seth: Oh, okay.

David: It's a really, really weird one. And then there's, like, social reasons, like certain ones were socially unacceptable by their neighbors or whatever. It was to make them stand out for social reasons, yada, yada, yada.

Seth: Okay.

David: Okay. I don't, maybe there's bits and pieces of these that matter.

Seth: It's part of, it's like this is a culture that's thousands of years old.

David: It's really hard to pinpoint.

Seth: And so some of those things may be true-

David: Right

Seth: ... and maybe innovations for the time, but we probably don't have access to enough information to find that. Besides that, we don't need-

David: We don't need

Seth: ... necessarily all this.

David: No.

Seth: The text gives us the reason for all these food laws. It's to be holy-

David: Yes

Seth: ... like God is holy.

David: That's right. And so-

Seth: To be unique-

David: Yes

Seth: ... like God is unique.

David: And so the real reason why, w- why God chose these animals and not those animals, right, is the same reason why he chose Israel and not the other nations.

Seth: He says in verse 47, "To make a distinction."

David: That's right.

Seth: And if you go back to our Exodus podcast, we talk about this language which is used all over Exodus, I think in, first time in, is in chapter 12-

David: Mm

Seth: ... where, you know, uh, the Passover. The Passover.

David: Oh, right.

Seth: Right.

David: Yep.

Seth: And God makes distinctions between people, not because of something inherent in them, but because he's-

David: He's just chosen

Seth: ... done it.

David: Right.

Seth: To, which kinda goes back to the arbitrary thing, but not necessarily.

David: It's not arbitrary at all. It's, it's, it's deliberate decision, is that God, God didn't spin a roulette wheel and the ball landed on Israel, right? [laughs] God said, "Israel."

Seth: Right.

David: And whenever he's asked for a reason, he said, "Because I chose." And the, the best answer we can get out of him is out of, is in Deuteronomy, "I chose you because you're the weakest-

Seth: Right. [laughs]

David: ... and the smallest."

Seth: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

David: And so, um, anyway, so why did God choose some animals and not on other animals? It's to show that he makes decisions on what is clean and what is unclean, and he has called Israel and said, "You're clean. You're mine. I've chosen you. And in order to just highlight that, I'm going to choose your diet as well."

Seth: Yeah.

David: "And these things are yours because I've said they're yours for no other reason. You just need to trust that these are the things that I've said are good." So it's like constant obedience, right? Just-

Seth: Right

David: ... God has said it, so we obey it. Um-

Seth: Everything you put to your lips, everything that comes into your mouth is, it communicates the uniqueness of your God-

David: That's it

Seth: ... the uniqueness of your salvation-

David: Yes

Seth: ... and the uniqueness of you as a people.

David: Right. Every time you eat, you should be, you should be going like, "Man, why are we eating this?" Well, it's because God said, God chose it-

Seth: And, well, he says it-

David: ... in the same way he chose us

Seth: ... because I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

David: Right.

Seth: Every time you eat cow instead of pork because God brought us out of the land of Egypt.

David: Right.

Seth: Why am I eating this bird and not that bird? Because God brought us out of the land of Egypt.

David: You're preaching yourself the, the, the early gospel-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... every time you eat.

Seth: You're re-reliving the Exodus story-

David: That's right

Seth: ... every time you're eating.

David: Yep.

Seth: Eating.

David: And so the reason why we know this is the main way to understand this text is because of the way Jesus and the apostles handled it in the New Testament.

Seth: Yeah. So the first place we see this is in Mark 7.

David: Okay.

Seth: Well, it happens in Matthew too, but Jesus is having a conversation with the Pharisees over and over again about what constitutes true holiness.

David: Mm.

Seth: So in Mark 7, all these Pharisees are arguing about w-

Seth: ... proper hand washing technique, proper etiquette when washing bowls and whatever else. And Jesus, and they're coming to Jesus's disciples and accusing them of not following the tradition of their fathers and being unclean, not able, not true disciples like they are.

David: Right.

Seth: And Jesus responds by saying essentially, "You've neglected the law." He talks about this whole Corbin thing, which we don't have time to go into.

David: [laughs]

Seth: But he basically says, "You're actually breaking the law by adding all these traditions of men to it." And then he says this about what defiles a person.

David: Oh, yeah.

Seth: He says, "Hear me all of you and understand, there's nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." And when he entered into the house and left the people, the disciples were confused, and [laughs] they asked about that parable. And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him since it enters into his heart, but his stomach and then it's exp- expelled." Thus, he declared all foods clean.

David: [laughs]

Seth: And then you're like, "Wait, wait."

David: How did you make that-

Seth: Did, did he? [laughs]

David: How did you make that leap?

Seth: Yeah. And so what he, the point is, is the point that we've been making, what are the food laws about? They're about holiness.

David: Yes.

Seth: They're be- about being God's unique people. And what Jesus is doing here, he's saying, "God's, being God's unique people begins in your heart."

David: Right.

Seth: The most foundational aspect would be about God's people, is not just honoring him with your lips by what food touches your lips-

David: Yes

Seth: ... but what comes from your heart. And so Jesus here is reinterpreting the heart of the law for a new context. That's what he's doing. And so, so that's what, that's Jesus, that's, that's it.

David: Yeah, he's saying, yeah, he's saying that like y- you think that you're, you're made holy by what you do, but you're not, you're made holy by who I've said that you are, by what I do. And so, um, and then we, w- then we see, okay, so then why were those food laws there, right? Like, why were they there? And we see then in Acts 9 and 10 why they were there. So in Acts 9 and 10, um, we, it's this famous story of Peter being called to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, and, um, he's just chilling, praying in his house, and all of a sudden he sees this crazy vision and he sees this sheet from heaven drop down, and in it is every single kind of animal, both clean and unclean.

Seth: Rise, Peter.

David: Right.

Seth: Kill and eat.

David: Kill and eat. [laughs]

Seth: Best verse ever. Uh, rise, Peter. Kill and eat. And he's like, "By no means, Lord."

David: Yeah.

Seth: "I, I've never eaten anything unclean." And it's like, um, have you not read Mark seven? Or, you know, it's like-

David: Right, right, right, right

Seth: ... [laughs] it's like, uh, but anyway, he's like, and then Jes- and then Jesus rebukes him. And he says, "Don't call anything I've said is clean, unclean."

David: Right.

Seth: Don't you, don't do that. And I think-

David: He's referring to Mark chapter seven-

Seth: He is

David: ... uh, when he's talking to the Pharisees.

Seth: That's right.

David: It's not about what comes into your body-

Seth: Yep

David: ... it's what comes out of your heart.

Seth: Yep, but there's a further point to be made here.

David: Right.

Seth: So he has this vision, and I, I don't think Peter knows what to do with it yet. He's like, "So is this just about diet? I can, like I can eat pig now?"

David: Right. Right.

Seth: And so all of a sudden, he's woken up out of this vision by a knock at the door. And there's this knock at the door, and these people are there and they're saying, "Hey, we've been told by our master because, like, we had a visitation from God that y- you are Peter, and you would be in this house, and you have to come with us and preach us the gospel." So Peter goes with them, and he goes, and he, he realizes that they're Gentiles.

David: Right.

Seth: And so he preaches the, the gospel to them, and the Holy Spirit falls on them like it did in Acts two in Jerusalem, like it did, um, in Samaria, right, with Philip.

David: Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

Seth: And now it's hap- and now it's happened again in the Gentiles. And so he's saying, "Oh man, the promise isn't just for the Jews-

David: Right

Seth: ... or even for like the half Jews in Samaria. It's for the straight up Gentiles."

David: Yeah.

Seth: "And I thought they were unclean."

David: Right.

Seth: And then he's like, "Oh, I get it. Don't call anything I've made clean, unclean." This is about Jews and Gentiles. This is about the distinction. So what he's saying-

David: In Peter-

Seth: Yep

David: ... in Peter's mind, he had conflated the h- the food laws and cast that onto people.

Seth: That's right.

David: The, these foods are unclean.

Seth: Yep.

David: Those people are unclean.

Seth: Right.

David: These foods are clean, therefore I'm clean.

Seth: That's right.

David: That was a category mistake.

Seth: That's right, because he was saying, "Oh, Gentiles eat pigs, so they're unclean."

David: Yes.

Seth: Right? And they're unclean also 'cause they're unchosen.

David: Right.

Seth: They're not the people of God. The Holy Spirit won't, won't fall on them. And, and so what, what God is saying is, these clean and unclean distinctions of food that we see here in Leviticus 11 is a foreshadowing of, of like who's chosen and who's unchosen. So like right now, there's a distinction. It's Israel.

David: Right.

Seth: Right? But when the new covenant comes, it's for all nations, and so it's, it's stopped and switched to don't call any food unclean-

David: Right

Seth: ... so that we can see very viscerally in like just what we eat-

David: Right

Seth: ... that everyone is allowed to come into the household of God. [gentle music] So this next section probably has just this pastoral weight on it.

David: Yeah.

Seth: It's one of these commands that a lot of people point to, and even I read, I'm like, this feels like it's degrading to women or makes it harder for women to access and be part of God's kingdom and God's presence. And essentially it says that when a woman is pregnant and has a boy, she has 33 th- days of, uh, uncleanliness.

David: Right. There's, there's the first seven.

Seth: There's the first seven.

David: And then an extra 33.

Seth: Yeah, on the seventh, there's seven days, and on the eight day they circumcise the boy.

David: Right.

Seth: And there's 33 days. And then for, um-

David: A, a, a female

Seth: ... a female

David: ... a daughter

Seth: ... it's twice that.

David: Right.

Seth: 66 days.

David: After the seven, then there's twice as long to wait until you can be ritually clean again.

Seth: Yes, and then you make a sacrifice, and then you're clean.

David: Yep. Right. And so why this longer time for the girl than the boy?

Seth: I think it's less of a devaluing of the woman or a further ostracizing of the woman, but an honoring of the woman.

David: Okay.

Seth: Because I think the woman, when she bears a woman, is producing a double amount of life, and by virtue of a double amount of life, a double amount of death. Because when she bears a daughter, that daughter too-

Seth: ... will be able to bir- birth children, the Lord willing.

David: Right.

Seth: And so one day she will also have this type of ritual uncleanliness-

David: Right

Seth: ... that is in here. So I think what the mother is doing is she is not just, um, cleaning herself for her own uncleanliness.

David: Mm-hmm.

Seth: She's actually taking her daughter's uncleanliness on her as well-

David: Yes

Seth: ... and cleansing her as well.

David: Right. Yeah.

Seth: So I think it's a very, it's a, a, it's honoring the fact that women are the producers of life, and it's giving women this redemptive role, and also makes them kind of like priests in this-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... one sense. It like, it gives them this redemptive role in their daughter's, uh, purity.

David: Right.

Seth: And I think that's powerful, but it's also counterintuitive [laughs] the way that I, I, at least I read on the surface most times.

David: Right, because what it looks like is happening is boys make you a little unclean, girls make you a lot unclean.

Seth: Right.

David: And so it takes longer to clean up, but what you're actually supposed to see here is most likely, um, you know, if you're, if you're, you know, 'cause a woman, uh, even during her, um, menstruation period, which we'll read about I think in chapter 15, is that they become unclean during that part as well, right?

Seth: Right.

David: Um, and they have to take some time away, uh, from being able to go into God's presence. And so they're saying, when you bear a, a daughter, she will have those periods as well, uh, in two senses. [laughs]

Seth: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David: And, uh, and, um, and you are bearing that weight for her early on.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And yeah, it i- and so you kinda have to read it the way it's trying to get you to read it and not projecting, um, our own, like, sensitivities-

Seth: Right

David: ... towards gender roles. It's just saying, like, um, you know, th- they will have future periods of uncleanliness, bear some of that now. And so, like, we're, you're allowing that, that, that mom-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... to be in that redemptive role for that daughter.

Seth: And I also think you're seeing some, uh, the man and the woman, the son and the daughter also operating kind of the two sides of, of redemptive coin. So you have the, you have the boy who seven days after he's born, um, and on, on the eighth day is circumcised. So we're, let's go back to creation. There's seven days of creation.

David: Mm-hmm.

Seth: And on the eighth day begins life in the world. So the boy is circumcised on the eighth day to mark the beginning of life in the covenant community.

David: Right.

Seth: Right?

David: Yes.

Seth: And the woman has an additional... So, like, so one, that's kind of traumatic for, [laughs] you know-

David: Yeah. [laughs]

Seth: ... that's a, that's a big deal.

David: Right.

Seth: Circumcision is not like, it's a painful thing for the child.

David: Right.

Seth: And it's not great for the parents washing necessarily, [laughs] you know?

David: Right. [laughs]

Seth: And then for the woman, she's also part of redeeming-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... the world. She is, um-

David: It's through Eve that the s- Messiah will come. She-

Seth: It's through Eve, the Messiah.

David: Yeah, it's the, she, Eve is the one giving the promise.

Seth: Right.

David: Yeah.

Seth: So you have this sense of, like, the man representing this kind of creator type of role-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... this worker role, this new creation type of role, and the woman as the one who is giving birth to new life, but also bearing the penalty of death for that new life.

David: Right. And what's cool too, is what I was thinking, is, um, additional atonement has to be made for both children. For the, for the son, he has to be circumcised. Blood is spilt.

Seth: Yeah.

David: This time is taken, and, um, that is kind of the remaining 33 days, if you will, right?

Seth: Yeah.

David: That's the extra-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... that has to be done. Well, the girl doesn't have to be circumcised. She doesn't have to go through an extra step. And so for her, her redemption is an additional 33 days.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And so it's not necessarily like a, a, like a, an either/or, a, a worse or better. We're saying, like, both have to go through an additional period of atonement for that child. One is done with the mother bearing the, bearing the solitude-

Seth: Right

David: ... and the, and the, and the patience, and the exclusion, and the waiting before she can go back in the temple of the Lord.

Seth: Right.

David: For the son, there's a sacrifice of foreskin-

Seth: Right

David: ... that it's marking that off, and both have to do with this reproductive promise-

Seth: Right

David: ... that leads to the Messiah-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... and who will ultimately be the one who is that mother who bears the, the iniquity of her daughter-

Seth: Right

David: ... you know, and who atones for her daughter.

Seth: Why, and why do these exist? Because God saved them out of the land of Egypt.

David: Right.

Seth: Men are gonna be circumcised to remember that fact, and women are gonna wait an a- an additional 33 days.

David: Yes.

Seth: It's a way for men and women in the birth of a child to remember God's previous saving action. [gentle music]

David: Okay, so now we're into chapters 13 and 14.

Seth: The leopards.

David: Let's talk about the leopards.

Seth: [laughs]

David: You just go back-

Seth: I can't, I can't. [laughs]

David: The leopards.

Seth: [laughs] The leopards.

David: You should go back, you should just count the number of times we say leopards-

Seth: Yes

David: ... instead of lepers-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... and you'll never know.

Seth: You'll never, yeah.

David: You might know. You might know.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Send us the exact number and we'll send you a prize. [laughs]

Seth: We'll send you a prize. [laughs]

David: Uh, it, but we're talking about the l- the lepers, a- and, like, a note about this is the wor-

Seth: It's like the-

David: ... the word leper is, is, uh, kind of a r- come, comes from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was done, uh, later-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... you know.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And, uh, he, I think it's lepra is the word he used.

Seth: It just means skin condition.

David: It's a skin condition, yeah.

Seth: So it's-

David: It's, it's-

Seth: ... it's a variety of skin conditions

David: ... we should, we should not think of this as what we would call leprosy today as a medical thing.

Seth: Right.

David: It's not the same thing. It is a-

Seth: It included leprosy

David: ... it included it-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... but it is a wide variety, and you, you can just see that from the different types of skin disease that are talked about, and that-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... the same word is used for, like, uh-

Seth: Mold in your house

David: ... like mold in your plaster.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Right. And so it cannot be the same thing, and so we should not try to conflate those two.

Seth: It's infectious diseases. That's-

David: Infectious diseases, yeah

Seth: ... that's what we're talking about.

David: Yes. And so, um, it has to do with the skin, the hair, the beard, the house, the, the, like, even your clothes, it can, it can be in your clothes.

Seth: And so if, if we put it in the category of infectious diseases-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... or pollution or germs, like, okay, we've already talked about how, what we eat, how we're born, and now we're talking about how we're healed.

David: Okay, yeah.

Seth: Like, we're talking about the medical profession.The fact that God saved you from the land of Israel, you can be holy in the way that you practice a version of medicine-

David: Mm

Seth: ... a thousand years ago. Like, that's what's happening right now. Do this test, do this test, do this test, wait this many days, put them in quarantine for this many days. We're doing all this to be holy like God is holy.

David: Right.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Okay, so let's talk about each of these three. So, w- it talks about people, right?

Seth: Yes.

David: Uh, clothing and houses. Is that right?

Seth: Mm-hmm.

David: Okay. And basically, it, it, it feels really redundant and specific when you're reading through it.

Seth: It does.

David: And so, uh, basically-

Seth: Here-

David: ... what's happening is it's like, uh, th- whenever a l- a leprous disease is spotted in a person, a piece of clothing, or a home, the priest is brought out to examine it and basically run it through a rubric here given by God. If it has these signs, it's a leprous disease.

Seth: Right.

David: If it has these signs, it's not, or maybe wait seven days and see if it gets better or worse.

Seth: If it looks like it might be, wait seven days.

David: That's right.

Seth: And then if he comes back and says, "Okay, it's clean. Go and offer a sacrifice, and you're clean."

David: Right.

Seth: Um, yes.

David: Okay. And so, um, that, that's, that's basically the layout of this part of the text. And so, um, one, one, like, and you've hinted at, uh, the other, the other piece, all of these end in one or, one or two ways, right? If the leprosy doesn't clean up, the person is set outside the camp.

Seth: Mm-hmm.

David: The clothing is destroyed. The house is torn down.

Seth: Yep.

David: Right?

Seth: Verse 45 is kinda like the emotional heart of it. "The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip," which, uh, like, with a mustache? Like, what does he mean by that? [laughs]

David: [laughs] I don't know.

Seth: What does he mean by that?

David: I didn't look that up.

Seth: Um, and cry out, "Unclean, unclean." He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

David: Right. And so, um, a- and then the opposite is if, if you are cleaned, if you're healed, then you can be made ritually pure again. You can be made clean. So it's not only that you are healed physically, it's that then you must actually become ritually clean again, and that's when you would go and offer the sacrifices-

Seth: Right

David: ... uh, to then basically make atonement for your uncleanliness so that you can be back in God's holy presence.

Seth: Right. I thought it was so interesting here, too, I mean, so interesting. They had, like, two birds, and one was killed and used to cleanse, and the other one was let go and put out back in the wilderness. Thought that was just a strange little detail-

David: Oh, yeah

Seth: ... here.

David: Well, it's gonna open a can of worms, [laughs] like, but we can talk about a lot of that on the Day of Atonement.

Seth: Yeah, 'cause it comes back.

David: It comes back.

Seth: It comes back.

David: That whole idea comes back. So put a pin in that, and everyone get excited for the Day of Atonement. Oh, it's, that's next week, isn't it?

Seth: It's next week. [laughs]

David: Oh, [laughs] well, there you go. You won't have to wait long. I was about to say, wait, that's chapter 16. Um-

Seth: So one thing that-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... so one thing that confused me here initially, but I think it's been cleared up now, like, I felt like the first time I heard guilt offerings and sin offerings need to be offered were here-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... for lepers, but w- I thought this wasn't had, had, didn't have to do with, uh-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... uh-

David: Sin

Seth: ... guilt and sin.

David: Yeah.

Seth: But we've already talked about this in the sense, like, sickness is part of living in a world-

David: Yes

Seth: ... not under God's, not being, not being in Eden. Sickness is a part of not being in Eden.

David: Right. Yes, right, a- and we're talking about not necessarily active sin, right? And so, um, even Jesus kinda ran into this, and, you know, it's talked about in Job, this idea, like, okay, so who sinned that this disease fell on you? And it's like, wrong question. That's not a r-

Seth: Right

David: ... that's not a good question.

Seth: Yeah.

David: It's you live in a sinful world, and so there is disease.

Seth: Yeah.

David: It's not an every leper was, um, uh, like, was struck, struck that way because of a specific sin.

Seth: And so these sacrifices then point to the fact that there, that sacrifice will hopefully be the way in which we are cleaned.

David: Yes.

Seth: The way the world will get cleaned up again is through sacrifice.

David: Right.

Seth: Like, that's the, that's, that's the pattern.

David: Yeah.

Seth: Like, the cosmos itself, our bodies, the foods that we eat, uh, the, our medical practices, they will be made clean-

David: Mm

Seth: ... by offerings and sacrifices.

David: Yeah. It also shows that there is kind of a symbolism in sickness that, um, you know, we think about sickness, and it just kinda terminates in itself.

Seth: Right.

David: It's like it's so bad, you know, cancer, and all this stuff-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... is horrible. Uh, disease is not part of Eden. It's not part of heaven. Um, and so, but what we're supposed to see here in the linking of physical disease and spiritual uncleanliness or ritual impurity is that the sickness that is in our bodies is an indication of the sickness that is in our world, right?

Seth: Yeah.

David: Sickness in our bodies is a, is a visible, visceral picture of how broken and unclean-

Seth: Right

David: ... and messed up and ill our world is.

Seth: Yeah.

David: And so I just think that that, that that's interesting.

Seth: So part, and part of the gospel story isn't just-

David: Yes

Seth: ... that we're saved to live with Jesus, which is the best news.

David: Yes.

Seth: But part of the gospel is that our world will be remade.

David: Right.

Seth: That we'll live on this earth, and it'll be perfect. Our relationship with animals, with the, the ecosystem, with the planet, with each other, with our bodies-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... will all be made new, and none of this will exist again.

David: That's right.

Seth: And-

David: Okay, yeah, and so Jesus spent a lot of time with lepers.

Seth: So many lepers.

David: [laughs]

Seth: Man, I was so encouraged. As I was reading through these laws, I was just like, "Oh, my gosh."

David: Yeah, you texted me.

Seth: "It's all Jesus."

David: And you were like, "I'm reading about the leopards in" [laughs]

Seth: [laughs]

David: I just keep saying leopards. It's so much fun. I can't, I can't, so anyway, you're like, "I keep reading about the le- uh, about the lepers in Leviticus, and I just keep worshiping." And I was like, "That's a weird text." [laughs]

Seth: [laughs] So, so he-

David: So explain yourself

Seth: ... and he left it unread and unresponded to. [laughs]

David: I saw it. It popped up on my phone. I read it, and then I was like-

Seth: "I'm not responding." [laughs]

David: ... [laughs] "I'm not responding to this."

Seth: So-

David: So why were you worshiping while reading about the lepers?

Seth: Because if you think you have leprosy, you call the priest over, and they run some tests, and then you're isolated for seven days. And if it's proved you're clean, you go back to the priest.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And then they declare you clean, and you offer sacrifices.

David: Okay.

Seth: So in, uh, all throughout, uh, the gospels-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... in Luke 5, Matthew 8, Mark 1-

David: Yep

Seth: ... Jesus meets a leperAnd each time, he comes to him and he says, "Now go and offer the sacrifice to the priest."

David: That's right.

Seth: So that means that Jesus was assuming he was a priest.

David: What?

Seth: Because he, Jesus was assuming-

David: Oh, oh, 'cause he was able to call him clean.

Seth: Clean, right.

David: That's the, that's the priest's job.

Seth: That's the priest's job.

David: You don't have the authority to do that, Jesus.

Seth: And he didn't have to wait seven days.

David: Oh.

Seth: Why didn't he have to wait seven days? 'Cause seven days is the dawning, is the, the framework for creation.

David: Oh, and he made a new creation right there.

Seth: He made a new creation right there.

David: Oh, [laughs] that's cool.

Seth: So, so Jesus, acting like the priest, prays for the man, heals him, does a work of new creation in him-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... restores him to his pr- the way he was before-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... announces him clean and says, "Go and offer the f- the sacrifice you're supposed to with the other guy."

David: Wow.

Seth: Isn't that amazing? [laughs]

David: That's really cool.

Seth: Isn't that amazing?

David: And what's also really amazing about it is Jesus heals him physically, which is the miracle, and a lot of us get hung up on the miracle, right? And it's good, and God still heals today, and, like, we see that. But, um, [laughs] what Jesus continues to do afterwards is also so important. He says, "Okay, now you need to make sure that you're ritually pure, too." And so what's, what's amazing about the gospel is that God is actively present today, bringing his kingdom, healing us, um, whenever he, whenever he wants to in his mercy, he, to heal our bodies physically. But the better news is that that, um, that deeper thing in the world-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... that sickness pointed to-

Seth: Mm-hmm

David: ... right?

Seth: Yeah

David: ... that illness, that brokenness-

Seth: Yep, yep, yep

David: ... in the world, Jesus heals the deeper sickness, right? He heals the actual brokenness in the world. He makes us so ritually pure that though we were, like, our, our skin was breaking out in boils and we had to run around yelling, "Unclean," because of his death, burial, and resurrection, we are able to walk boldly-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... into the presence of God because the sacrifice has been made for us.

Seth: You got there too quick.

David: Oh, I'm too excited, though. [laughs]

Seth: You're too excited.

David: You got me excited.

Seth: You, I got you excited. So when Jesus heals leper in Mark 1-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... so what do we read here in Leviticus, uh, 45, that they have to be outside the camp.

David: Right.

Seth: And announced, "Unclean, unclean."

David: Oh, man. Yeah.

Seth: Mark 1, Jesus goes to a leper. He touches him, which he's not supposed to do. He heals them, and then he says, "Don't tell anybody-

David: Right

Seth: ... what you're supposed to do." And then he says, "But go offer the sacrifice."

David: Yes.

Seth: So what happens is the leper goes to the temple of the Lord, offers the sacrifice, begins announcing all, to all these people that God is here.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And then, but what, [laughs] the text just says, "And then Jesus went to the desolate place."

David: Oh, he went outside the camp for him.

Seth: He traded places with him.

David: Oh.

Seth: And so, and, and it tells us in multiple other places that he goes out to ple- to pray.

David: Right.

Seth: But, like, he trades places-

David: Wow

Seth: ... with the person. And in the m- in the story of Mark, there's the paralytic that comes, and Levi that comes after him.

David: Yeah.

Seth: All these people are on the outside, and we're told over and over again that the way that Jesus is gonna save sinners, he's gonna heal the paralytic, is by trading places with them. He'll become paralyzed on the cross-

David: Right

Seth: ... and he'll become sin, so that that sin-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... may be passed off of him.

David: And Jesus was crucified outside the city.

Seth: Yes.

David: Right.

Seth: That's exactly right.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And so I think you're right when you said there's this symbolism, so, like, there is a connection between sin personal and sin cosmic.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And I think leprosy acts kind of like that kind of fulcrum or that lever for that kind of turn-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... in the Gospels and here in the, in the Levit- Leviticus.

David: Right. And what, what else is really cool is that, uh, the, [laughs] the, there's, like, some irony here because, um, you know, when you were a leper, you could not come into the presence of God. You were unclean visibly. Like, it was really clear that you were unclean. But the amazing reversal here is that the presence of God comes out from the cosmic tabernacle, right, in Jesus Christ. He became flesh out of heaven and, and came to the leprous person, the unclean person, and cleaned them up so that they could then come into the presence of God.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Like, where, like, the person that wasn't allowed to come into the tabernacle, the tabernacle comes to them.

Seth: Yeah.

David: Like, I just think that's so cool.

Seth: That's cool.

David: That reversal that happens there.

Seth: Right after being alone.

David: Mm.

Seth: I thought that was so fascinating that Leviticus, like, calls out that feel- and not, not just, like, a fact, they will be alone.

David: Right.

Seth: But, like, they call it out. Like-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... they will be alone.

David: Mm-hmm.

Seth: They will be lonely.

David: Yeah.

Seth: They will be on the outside, and for the Lor- the presence of the Lord to come and meet them. So it's just a profound symbol of grace.

David: It is.

Seth: This is the way the Lord saved you out of the, out of the land of Egypt, by bringing you out with a strong hand and a strong arm, and he's doing this again in the medical codes [laughs] of the ancient Hebrew community. [instrumental music]

David: Okay. So, um, I always like to end on a high note and, you know, in ending with my favorite topics.

Seth: Semen. [laughs]

David: Semen. [laughs]

Seth: Bodily discharges. [laughs]

David: Bodily discharges. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's a very comforting chapter to read. [laughs]

Seth: Menstruation.

David: It doesn't make, it doesn't have a lot of words in it that make me cringe. It's fine. Um, yep. So, uh, the last section in these cleanliness codes is about bodily discharges. So Seth, since you just love saying all these words, apparently-

Seth: Ugh

David: ... that I just tried to-

Seth: I'm a youth pastor

David: ... You're a youth pastor.

Seth: So I, I say these as part of gaining an audience.

David: That's true. [laughs] So what are some of the bodily discharges that it talks about here?

Seth: I've already named them all.

David: Oh, oh, is that it?

Seth: Uh, well, no, there's some more.

David: There's more. [laughs]

Seth: There's, like, various discharges that are unnamed and just because they come out of you.

David: Right.

Seth: Like leakage.

David: Leakage.

Seth: Things like this. [laughs]

David: That's a good word. Man, so many good words.

Seth: So many good words.

David: Right. So there's, like, yeah, there's, whenever you have, like, um, an emission of semen, it talks about whether w- in w- like, in sex or accidentally-

Seth: Mm-hmm

David: ... or-

Seth: Right

David: ... whatever, then you're-

Seth: At night

David: ... then you're unclean for just the night.

Seth: The night. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David: You just go to bed, and you wake up, and you're clean.

Seth: Yep.

David: I- is that it? Do you have to-

Seth: That's it.

David: Yeah.

Seth: I think you might have to... Oh, sorry.

David: You might just have to-

Seth: I should've read it more closely

David: ... wash or something, or-

Seth: I think you have to wash.

David: Yeah.

Seth: Pretty much everybody has to wash.

David: You have to wash. But it's like-

Seth: Yeah, rinse in water, rinse in water, rinse in water

David: ... but you just do that at home.

Seth: Yep.

David: Yeah. So it's like take a shower, go to bed, wake up-

Seth: And you'll be fine

David: ... and you're fine.

Seth: And for women, when they have their periods-

David: Right

Seth: ... for the duration of their period-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... they're unclean, and thenThe evening of the last night of their period-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... they're clean again.

David: They, they take a shower and wake up-

Seth: And they're clean

David: ... and they're clean.

Seth: Yep.

David: Yep. And then there's one final one, right?

Seth: Yeah, this, you probably know this woman as the woman with the bodily discharge, so the issue of blood in, uh, Matthew 9. But here, if you, a woman is bleeding, uh, f- that's not connected to her period-

David: Right

Seth: ... she, for however long she's bleeding, she's unclean, and then once the bleeding stops, she waits seven days, and then on the eighth day she's clean again. This creation, new creation thing happening.

David: Right.

Seth: And then she's clean after she offers a, a appropriate sacrifice.

David: Okay. So, I mean, what are we supposed to see in these, in these bodily discharges? I mean, is it just the, the fact that, like, even just being a person, [laughs] you, you ooze uncleanliness?

Seth: Yeah.

David: Is that the idea here?

Seth: It says, verse 31, "Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their, their uncleanli- uncleanliness-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... lest they die in their uncleanliness by defiling my tabernacle that's in their midst."

David: Right.

Seth: So it's like, it, it goes back to what we've been saying. By existing in the world-

David: Mm-hmm

Seth: ... it's-

David: We, we just ipso facto become unclean-

Seth: We, we become unclean

David: ... through the normal course of life.

Seth: Therefore, here is how you remember, in your uncleanliness, in a world that is dying, the God of life who saved you out of Egypt.

David: Right.

Seth: And it's these a- it's these actions, seven days of waiting, one day of waiting, showering, washing. And I mean, a lot of these things are pretty common sense. Like, if something happens in the middle of the night, you take a shower-

David: Right

Seth: ... [laughs] and you're clean.

David: Yeah.

Seth: But for most guys, it doesn't go beyond that. And I think, but for Israel, it was supposed to be a remembrance of the fact that they had been saved by God from death. This is a symbol of new life in God's created world, and he is going to remake it. And even if it's related to sickness, like there's a whole, we didn't even talk about the category-

David: Mm

Seth: ... of bodily discharges not related to, like, physical things, but like-

David: Right

Seth: ... you're hurting or you're pus or something, you know?

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth: Like, you take a shower, you wash off, you have a sacrifice, seven days, one day. You're fine again.

David: Yeah.

Seth: All that's happening here. So I think it's the same thing we've been saying, like, how does living life in a fallen world, in a broken world, bring us back to the God of life-

David: Mm

Seth: ... through these actions?

David: Yeah. I, I mean, I just, you keep talking about these seven days, and then the eighth day you're clean.

Seth: Yeah.

David: It's just, it sounds like it's, it's all pointing towards, like, an expectation, right? That one day there will be a final Sabbath rest, and you'll wake up on the other side of it, and everything will be clean.

Seth: That's why Jesus is called the Lord of the Sabbath so many times.

David: Yeah.

Seth: And then in Matthew 9, when this woman with the issue-

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah

Seth: ... of blood comes, like, what happens? She's been bleeding for all this time. She-

David: Years, isn't it?

Seth: Years, 12 years.

David: Oh my goodness.

Seth: And she touches Jesus, and the s- seven days of new creation are done in her immediately.

David: Yeah.

Seth: She's healed. "Your faith has made you well."

David: Right.

Seth: Again, what is the Book of Leviticus about? It is not about doing a list of laws to get back into God's good graces.

David: Right.

Seth: It is about trusting the God that saved you.

David: Your faith has made you well.

Seth: Your faith has made you well. [laughs]

David: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's, this is a lot.

Seth: It's a lot.

David: This is a lot.

Seth: This was helpful for me.

David: It was helpful for me, too.

Seth: I feel like-

David: Yeah

Seth: ... 98% of this podcast is just me helping myself-

David: [laughs] I know

Seth: ... understand the Bible better.

David: I know. [laughs] It's so true. I'll go back and listen to our own podcast, and I'm just like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, that's helpful."

Seth: Well, that's called, that's called narcissism.

David: Is it?

Seth: Yeah.

David: I think it makes me feel more stupid-

Seth: [laughs]

David: ... that I forgot already. Uh, I don't feel very narcissistic when I do it.

Seth: No.

David: It's kinda humbling.

Seth: The, uh, the best narcissists never do.

David: Oh, that's good. I've hidden it from myself well.

Seth: You have.

David: Well, that's great. That's a great segue-

Seth: Good night

David: ... from nothing. [laughs] Uh, but, uh, anyway, so we, we've talked a lot about, um, being clean, being made clean. Um, the, the biggest, like, atonement, cleanliness, getting into God's presence thing that's, that's gonna happen in, in the whole Old Testament happens in Leviticus 16. It is the-

Seth: Yeah

David: ... high point of the entire Torah. It's the Day of Atonement. It's what J- was on Jesus' lips whenever he came, uh, like proclaiming the day of the Lord's favor. Like-

Seth: Right

David: ... this is, this is a huge thing.

Seth: And the structure of the book, we had offerings-

David: That's right

Seth: ... priests, uh, purity.

David: Purity.

Seth: And on the backside of the Day of Atonement, we're gonna have purity-

David: Purity

Seth: ... priests offerings.

David: Priests offerings. Yep.

Seth: So it's the high point, literally.

David: High point, yep, and literarily.

Seth: Literarily.

David: Yes.

Seth: Ooh.

David: Yes. And so, um, we, we really hope you'll join us again, uh, next week for the Day of Atonement.

Seth: Mm-hmm.

David: It's gonna be fantastic.

Seth: I'll give you an update on my dental uncleanliness.

David: And we'll see what's going on with Seth's dental uncleanliness.

Seth: Seth's mouth. [laughs]

David: Uh, I know you'll be rapt with anticipation.

Seth: [laughs]

David: Uh, well, guys, thank you so much. Uh, we appreciate all of you, and we will see you next week. [upbeat music]

Outro: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel is a nonprofit dedicated to creating free gospel-centered media that speaks the gospel out of every corner of scripture. So to join us in our mission and view our resources, we invite you to visit spokengospel.com. [upbeat music]

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Clean and Unclean: How Leviticus 11–15 Points to Jesus

Show Notes

Why Cleanliness and Uncleanliness Matter

The Food Laws and God's Sovereign Choice

Childbirth and the Promise of New Life

Skin Diseases, Mold, and the Weight of Living in a Broken World

Jesus, the Priest Who Trades Places with the Unclean

Bodily Discharges and the Promise of Final Rest

Related Resources

Introduction to Leviticus

View our devotional on Leviticus 1-3

Ready to study a different book?

Listen to the Leviticus Introduction podcast

Listen to the Should We Obey The Law Today? podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 1-5: Offerings podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 6-10: Priests podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 11-15: Unclean Foods, Diseases, and Emissions podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 16: Day of Atonement podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 17-20: Blood, Sex, and Loving Your Neighbor podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 21-22: A Different Standard For Priests podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 23 and 25: Sabbath, Festivals, and Jubilee podcast

Listen to the Leviticus 24 and 26-27: The Death Penalty, Curses, and Vows podcast