Leviticus 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to give Israel rules about a woman after childbirth. After a son she is unclean seven days, the boy is circumcised on the eighth day, and she stays in the blood of her purifying thirty-three more days; after a daughter the times are doubled. When those days are over she brings a lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering to the priest, who makes atonement for her, and if she cannot bring a lamb she brings two birds instead.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to say something.
2. 12:2
   • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
   • If a woman conceives seed and bears a male child, she is unclean for seven days.
   • Her uncleanness is like the days of her menstrual impurity.
3. 12:3
   • On the eighth day the flesh of the boy's foreskin is to be circumcised.
4. 12:4
   • The woman shall then remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days.
   • She shall not touch any holy thing.
   • She shall not come into the sanctuary.
   • These restrictions last until the days of her purification are completed.
5. 12:5
   • If she bears a female child, she is unclean for two weeks.
   • Her uncleanness for a female child is as in her menstrual separation.
   • She shall then remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days.
6. 12:6
   • When the days of her purification are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring an offering.
   • She shall bring a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering.
   • She shall bring a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering.
   • She shall bring these to the entrance of the tent of meeting.
   • She shall bring these to the priest.
7. 12:7
   • The priest shall offer it before the LORD.
   • The priest shall make atonement for her.
   • She shall be cleansed from the source of her blood.
   • This is the law for the woman who has borne a male or a female.
8. 12:8
   • If she cannot afford a lamb, she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons.
   • One of them is for a burnt offering.
   • The other is for a sin offering.
   • The priest shall make atonement for her.
   • She shall be clean.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

In the King James, LORD in capital letters stands for God's own name. The people of Israel treated that name as too holy to say out loud.

12:2

"Unclean" translates a Hebrew term for ritual status, not dirtiness or wrongdoing. A person who is unclean is temporarily barred from holy places and holy things, and passes that status on by contact, until the set time and rites are over. Childbirth, contact with a corpse, certain skin diseases and normal bodily discharges all produced it. The seven days here match the rules for a woman's monthly period in Leviticus 15, which put her in the strictest grade of uncleanness, anyone touching her, or her bed or seat, became unclean too.

12:3

Circumcision is the cutting away of the foreskin of the penis. In Genesis 17 it is given to Abraham as the physical mark of the agreement between God and his descendants, to be done to every male on the eighth day after birth. The instruction sits inside the childbirth law because the eighth day falls within the mother's first period of uncleanness.

12:4

The thirty-three days are a second, milder stage that follows the first seven, making forty days in all. In this stage she is no longer "unclean" in the contagious sense of verse 2: she returns to ordinary life and ordinary contact, but she still may not handle holy things or enter the sanctuary. "In the blood of her purifying" is a literal rendering of the Hebrew, which uses "blood" for the discharge that continues after birth. "Anything set apart for God" means consecrated objects and consecrated food, such as the portions of sacrifices given to priests and their households, and offerings the family had vowed. The "sanctuary" is the tent shrine described in Exodus, the enclosure where the sacrifices were made.

12:5

The periods are doubled for a daughter: two weeks plus sixty-six days, eighty in all. The text states the difference without giving any reason for it.

12:6

A burnt offering was burned whole on the altar, none of it eaten. The offering called a "sin offering" here dealt with ritual impurity as much as with wrongdoing, its Hebrew name is connected with cleansing, and some translators call it a purification offering. Nothing in this chapter treats childbirth as a sin; the offering marks the end of a state of uncleanness. A turtledove is a small wild dove, not a turtle. The name imitates its call. The "tent of meeting" (KJV: "tabernacle of the congregation") is the portable tent shrine the Israelites carried through the wilderness. The "door" is the entrance to its courtyard, as far in as a lay worshiper could come.

12:7

"Make atonement" translates a Hebrew verb whose root sense is to wipe clean or to cover over. In contexts like this one it is the priestly act that removes ritual impurity and restores a person to normal standing in the community and access to the sanctuary.

12:8

A deliberate provision for the poor: two birds in place of the lamb, one bird taking the place of the more expensive animal. Leviticus repeats this pattern of graded costs elsewhere. This is the offering Mary is described as bringing in Luke 2:24.