Author: Ben Fust

Chapter 17 is in many ways a connecting and transitional chapter. Stemming back from the golden calf incident in Exodus 32, the remainder of Exodus through Leviticus 16 has primarily focused on the work of the priests (interacting with the people) in their protection against idolatry and understanding of God’s holiness, especially how to live and act among His presence among them. Aaron kicked this off as the person/priest primarily responsible for leading the people to the ill-fated golden calf. With that priest-channel of idolatry mostly straightened out, the next section transitions to defining the holiness (and paths to idolatry) of the average individual.

The first warning against improper action is against trying to avoid the sacrificial system altogether by killing animals outside of the sanctuary. This brings with it a number of problems. For starters, there has been a lot of effort made to sanctify (make holy) the various implements involved in the sacrifices (the altar, the priest, the clothes of the priest, etc.) Obviously, if you’re trying to administer sacrifices by yourself out in the wilderness, you are not the right person, are not clean, do not have access to any of the sanctified items, and are not in the proper area. Further, this prohibition makes it pretty easy to spot someone who is actually trying to sacrifice to another god (in this case some sort of goat-demon) vs. someone who is making an offering to Yahweh. “Whoring” after these other gods (think offering one’s body and service to them) seems to be something the Israelites are prone to. Having such clear and specific instruction on what an offering to Yahweh looks like prohibits someone from trying to claim they were offering sacrifices in the wilderness to Yahweh when they were actually offering to another god.

The penalty for violating this is that the violator shall be “…cut off from among his people”. Basically, this offense is akin to murder and will be punished by God directly. The lack of immediate punishment by the community that surrounds the violator may make it seem like they are getting off easy. However, the threat of being cut off by the hand of God would hover over a guy like an incurable and imminent disease whose effects may come upon him at any time without warning. The sense of paranoia that would exist in such a circumstance (and the fact that on the other side of that is the specific attention of a holy God on you) would make this consequence very difficult to bear.

Of course, there is a solution here. If you kill an animal in the wilderness, bring it in. The priest will make sure the blood is out, burn the fat, and give the meat back to you. No worries. Note that this law is not restricted to followers of Yahweh, even those who are just travelling through or are guests in the land must bring their meet to the tabernacle to be offered as a peace offering to Yahweh. There are certain things God will just not permit within His presence and fealty to other gods is one of them.

In v.10 we get a sense of how this whole sacrificial system works and why there is such a focus on blood. God declares that the blood of an animal is its life and it has been given to the people as a means of atonement. When sin entered the world, death came with it. The sacrificing of the animal allowed for that punishment to be covered, “atoned” for, with the animal acting as a substitute for the guilty person/people. The overall respect for blood (draining of it, not eating it, etc.) is centered around a respect for life itself (this is not foreign so far in the Torah, we saw a similar description in Genesis 9).

Two more distinctions are made as the chapter ends. If you’re hunting and you kill a beast, you must drain all of its blood and cover the blood with the dirt. It’s possible there’s a distinction here between wild game and those that are available for sacrifice. The strictest interpretation would be that if it’s an animal that is able to be sacrificed (ox, sheep, bull, etc.) then it must always be brought to the tabernacle to be dealt with, even if they are just going to drain the blood, burn the fat, and return the meat. However, if it’s not one of those and it is hunted and killed in the wild, then it doesn’t have to be taken to the priest, you just have to make sure to drain all of the blood before you eat it. The less strict interpretation is that anything hunted in the wild can be dealt with in the wild. I lean towards the more strict interpretation because the primary concern here is protecting against idol sacrifice in the wild so it would make the most sense that any animal killed that was allowed to be sacrificed to Yahweh would have to be taken to the tabernacle to be dealt with as an affirmation it wasn’t being whored-out to a goat-demon.

Finally, it’s unclean to eat an animal that dies on its own or is killed by another animal. If you do so, you have to bathe yourself and clean your clothes and wait the day and then you’ll be clean. If you refuse to do that, you remain unclean and bear the risk of walking around in an unclean state when a holy God lives among you. As attested in prior chapters, this is not a sensible risk to take.

Chapter 16 opens with a reference that brings us back to chapter 10, when Aaron’s two sons died after making an unauthorized sacrifice to God. Now, to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, God provides instructions to protect the high priest. But this is not the only point of the chapter. As we’ve seen outlined in chapters 11-15, there are a number of situations and behaviors that make the people unclean. Although this isn’t always a moral issue, it does keep them from being able to be in God’s presence in the sanctuary. Thus, beyond the daily sacrifices, there still needs to be a way to purify the sanctuary, the tent, the priests and the people from the pollutions of the unclean worshipers so that the presence of God may remain among them.

First, we deal with the priests. As understood in previous discussions from Exodus and earlier in Leviticus, priests can’t just strut into God’s house, doing so in an unclean state is certain death (part of the reason priests who entered the Holy of Holies took to having a rope tied around their leg when they went in. That way, if they died in there, the body could be retrieved without someone else potentially dying in their trying to remove the body, which at that point would make them unclean). So, two things happen. First, there is a purification sacrifice (a young bull) and a burnt offering (a ram). Also, he must wash, then change his clothes to a full linen get up. In his normal attire, the High Priest looks like a king. When entering the presence of God, he is dressed as a servant, nothing flashy about him.

The bull is sacrificed and its blood is used to purify a number of different areas. Coals from the sacrificial altar are mixed with incense and the smoke fills the holy of holies, covering the top of the ark of covenant where God’s presence dwells, and ultimately protecting the priest from inadvertently seeing the presence and dying. The blood is also touched onto the “mercy seat” on both the east side and the front. Some is also put onto the altar and to the tent itself.

But it’s not just the priests uncleanness that’s the problem, the people are also the problem. So from among the people two goats are taken for a sin (purification) offering and a ram for a burnt offering. With the two goats, lots are cast as one will be given to the Lord and one will be sent to Azazel (more on that in a minute). Generally what would happen is that the two goats would be placed in front of the high priest, one to the right and one to the left. Two lots were put into a pot or an urn, one with the words “to the Lord” on it and the other with the words “to Azazel” on it. The high priest would take the lots out and place one on each of the goats’ heads. Then everyone would be able to see which one goes to the Lord and which one goes to Azazel (as compared to the priests cleanness ceremony which happens in private).

The goat who belongs to the Lord would be sacrificed and its blood would be used in the same way the blood of young bull was for the priest sacrifice, sprinkled on the mercy seat, the tent, the altar, etc. The purpose is explicit, “… to make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses.”

Next, the priest approaches the live goat. He places both his hands on the goat’s head and confesses over it all of the sins of the people. In essence, the sins are being called out and transferred onto this scapegoat. The goat is then sent away into the wilderness with the help of someone whose gig it is to make sure the goat and all of its newly acquired uncleanness makes its way out of the camp, where apparently Azazel awaits.

The symbolism of the act is relatively clear, the sins of the people are transferred to the goat and removed from the camp so as to no longer able to pollute the people or the camp (and put them at risk of broaching the laws of mixing the holy and the unclean). The phrase the ESV renders as “…into the wilderness…” is literally rendered as “a land of cutting off”. There are various thoughts on what this means, then. It could just be a place where the goat ends up that they are physically cut off from returning to the camp (like a deep valley or something). Or, it could mean that it is a place where the life of the goat is cut off (later Jewish literature would record the fella whose job it was to handle these types of things as basically chasing the goat until it fell backwards off of a cliff).

This leads to the next interesting item, the description that the goat is for Azazel. With the initial comparison of one goat being for the Lord and one being for Azazel, many have been led to believe that Azazel is some kind of demon who is being pacified with this sinful goat. This isn’t surprising in those times as the wilderness was often considered the place where demons could be hanging out. Further, Azazel is the name of a demon in later Jewish literature (Enoch 8:1 and 9:6). Functionally, we could see this as the sins being returned back to their author. However, it would seem difficult to not see this as a gift to a demon, something that would certainly have no place in a ceremony that is entirely predicated on the service to and holiness of Yahweh. (Also, Leviticus 17:7 seems pretty clear that there can be no sacrifice, certainly including an offering, to any other spiritual being).

A couple of alternative explanations do not treat Azazel as a proper noun but instead as rare Hebrew nouns meaning either “complete destruction” or “rocky precipice”. These combine with our earlier explanation of the goat being “cut off” and ultimately point to the fate of the goat being one of destruction or, at least, isolation, without the implication that there is a specific being waiting for it or to whom it belongs.  I’m partial to either one of these explanations, not because it avoids complications related to some kind of goat-hoarding desert demon, but because they make more logistical sense, aren’t in conflict with sacrificial restrictions in the next chapter, and are more consistent with the rest of the Biblical record (which makes no future reference to Azazel).  Regardless, the intention is clear, the sin is being eliminated from Israel.

After all of this is done, the priest re-enters the tent of meeting, takes off the linen, washes himself, puts his old priestly duds back on, then makes the burnt offering for both himself and the people. Then the various things that need done with the sacrificed animal are taken care of, and anyone who was part of burning up the extra outside the camp has to wash before they re-enter. The same thing must occur for the fella who leads the scapegoat out of the camp.

Most of this has focused on the work of the priest, but the people have a part as well (outside of just providing a sacrifice). They must set this day aside annually as a sabbath, meaning they shall rest and no one shall work. But they will also “afflict” themselves, a reference that elsewhere in Scripture has a connotation of self-reflection, repentance, fasting and prayer. The people are participants in this recognition of the mercy God is extending, not in earning it, but in receiving it and actively taking part in it. And in it, they shall be clean before the Lord from all of their sins (16:30).

Hebrews 9 spends much time making the connection of this annual day of atonement for Israel to the sacrifice that is ultimately made by Jesus. In God’s new agreement with his people, there is no longer a day of atonement because there is no need for one. With Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, our sins were purged once and for all. There is no risk of dying in God’s holy presence or being limited to only once a year. Jesus has cleared the path for every one to enter into the presence of God at any time. And even as we consider the scapegoat, we see Jesus taking all of our sins upon himself, eliminating the iniquity from our camp, from ourselves.

What can we then take from this in our day to day lives? Perhaps, combining the entire picture of chapters 11-16, let us not become numb to the extent of our need for mercy and a means for redemption, nor God’s perfect and willing provision of that very thing. Further, although we have not and cannot earn that mercy, let us not give up “afflicting” ourselves, spending time in prayer, repentance, fasting, and reflection; actively taking part in the mercy we have been given.

The parade of uncleanliness marches on into chapter 15 where we conclude with discharges from the human body, specifically those related to reproduction. There has been a bit of a progression here when it comes to the duration of uncleanliness. For example, in chapter 11 certain animals were permanently unclean, chapter 12 describes uncleanliness related to childbirth that could extend for up to 80 days. Then we have the variable uncleanliness for those with skin diseases. And that leads us here, uncleanliness related to reproduction, often having an impact of a wash and a single night’s wait.

Chapter 15 is set up as a chiasm, a pattern often used in Hebrew writing to show either an emphasis (the point in the middle) or to indicate a sense of balance. In this instance, it is both. The section is talking about A) Long-term male discharge and sacrificial cleansing, B) Short-term male discharge and intercourse, B) Short-term female discharge and intercourse, A) Long-term female discharge and sacrificial cleansing. Although obviously the genders have different plumbing and the discharges are expressed in different ways. they are complementary (balance) and meet ultimately meet together intercourse (the B section, a point of emphasis).

For long-term male discharges, we’re talking some kind of emission from the penis that is unhealthy and possibly obstructing. Although not exclusive to it, many commentators believe it could cover diseases like gonorrhea. Regardless, the point is clear, if there’s a persistent flow of something that isn’t urine and isn’t supposed to be going on that long, that’s what we’re talking about. In reaction, the man is unclean. And not only is the man unclean, but basically anything that he touches or that comes into contact with undercarriage is unclean. If another person touches the man, is spit on by him, uses his saddle, sits on his chair, etc., must wash and then he’ll be clean until evening. The persistent-discharge fella obviously isn’t clean until the discharge stops. Once it does, he waits 7 days, washes his clothes and himself, and then he’s clean. On the eighth day, he does the sacrifice necessary to cleanse the temple and the sin offering and he’s good to go.

Next we have short-term male discharges.  This is your run of the mill ejaculation, regardless of whether it is part of the deed or not. Everyone and thing that is involved with the semen (clothes, ladies, etc.) needs washed and then is clean in the evening. This is a good time to note that this emission of semen isn’t sinful, it’s just something that causes someone to not be in a pure state so to approach a holy God so things have to be done to restore that. Notice there are no sacrifices here, just a wash and wait. Also, note that the impact of this kind of situation is that those who were involved in worship or who were fighting in God’s holy wars were not permitted to have sex.

Then there’s short-term female discharges. Here we’re talking about the woman’s menstrual cycle. The period of time for the uncleanness is longer here, practically because the cycle lasts longer then how long the emission of semen takes. And like the man’s short term discharge, there is no sacrifice necessary at the conclusion of the waiting time, just a wash and then they are clean. However, if a man has sex with a woman and her period arrives during the act, he is unclean for the 7 days and then has a wash and is clean. (Having sex while knowing she’s on her period is forbidden elsewhere in Leviticus so this has to be talking about an unforeseen circumstance). Like men, being unclean in this way is not an indication of sinfulness, cleanliness indicates boundaries of action. As long as those rules are followed (i.e., not going to the tabernacle when unclean), there is no guilt.

In our modern times, the length of time and the restriction of not touching anyone (lest you make them unclean) for ladies seems particularly restrictive. However, it is at least worth considering that would only impact ladies who were 1.) old enough to have a period but not old enough to have stopped 2.) women who weren’t pregnant (who don’t have a period), and 3.) ladies who are not nursing a baby (periods take longer to return when a woman is breastfeeding). For a society that saw children as a blessing, pregnancy and nursing were a constant condition. Thus, the greatest impact of these was upon unmarried younger ladies.

The long-term discharge refers to menstruation that happens perpetually or longer than the normal cycle. As long as it lasts, the woman is unclean as is anything she touches. This is what is going on with the woman who had bleeding for 12 years in Mark 5. Like the persistent emissions from a man, the woman here is unclean until the bleeding stops, at which time she does the purification and sin offerings and all is well. In general, the purification sacrifices seem to be necessary when the uncleanness lasts longer than a week.

What’s the purpose of these? Well, we can recognize that the holy should not mix with the unclean, it brings death. For the nation to know what is unclean, God had to tell them. Even seemingly normal actions, although not sinful, still make someone not not clean so they are being warned lest they inadvertently make the situation much worse by transgressing the purity of God and the tabernacle while unclean.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why these situations make them unclean to begin with. It is worth noting that many cultures of that time saw these same things as restricting people in some way in whatever their cultic practice is. Some have proposed it is for hygienic reasons, which does make sense in the long-term discharge situations. In effect it ends up as a bit of a quarantine, limiting interaction between people and potentially materials that have been exposed to the uncleanness or disease. However, that isn’t entirely satisfactory, or at least not consistent, as the reaction to short-term discharges for either men or women. Others have proposed symbolic explanations.

Most satisfactory, at least in my mind, is a thought that is consistent with how we have been thinking about clean/unclean in the other chapters, which are evaluations or comparisons to things that are “normal” or as God intended. In this case, “life fluids” that leave the body make that person to not be in their complete state, So, at least for a time, they are unclean. But just as the short-term issues are natural, so are the resolutions (wash and wait). Where the longer term issues are abnormal, they are associated with waiting, washing, and sacrificing to purify the tabernacle due to the presence of that uncleanliness in the camp.

Chapter 14 continues the discussion on dealing with “skin diseases”, although as noted in the previous chapter, our concept of this shouldn’t be restricted by what we know modern-day as leprosy as this chapter will eventually get to how to deal with houses that have these same afflictions. Whatever we’re dealing with, it can express itself in people and can be present in a house in such a way that makes the dwelling itself unclean.

Since we know from chapter 13 that an unclean person ends up outside of the community, the question is how those same folks can be brought back in once the disease is no longer present. One of the key things to note here is that, as the priests get involved, they are not curing diseases.  Their job is to to be arbiter of recognizing clean or unclean and make sure that, when that transition occurs, the proper things are done.

If a person who was unclean and outside the camp find that they no longer have the disease, the priest is called to confirm that this is indeed the case. If it is, a series of things occurs. First, the birds. One bird is killed and its blood is mixed with fresh water in an pot. The second bird as well as the cleansed persons is sprinkled with this mix. What’s going on here? We’ll see similar things in chapter 16 with the rituals around the Day of Atonement, but broadly we’re seeing this person being identified with these two birds. The first one is dies (like the diseased person would have) and the second one is allowed to go free to live again, a resurrection. There’s also a sense of purification (with the blood of the sacrificed first bird), just like there is from the Atonement ceremony and the previous purification offering. Regardless, we’re seeing in the birds the mirrored reality of the person who is transitioning back into a “whole” member of society, rescued from the living death they were living in prior to the disease being cured.

After the bird stuff is done, the person has to shave their entire body and wash themselves, a proper cleansing before re-joining the holy people of God, a member of the community where Yahweh dwells. However, they’re not there yet. Although allowed to live in the camp, they can’t stay in their own tent yet. On the 8th day of their return (think of the similar timeframe for circumcision of a baby), the shaving and washing happens again and the person is now clean.

One more thing remains, though, and that getting back to doing what members of this community do, the sacrifices. What follows, then, is 4 sacrifices that we have already been introduced to earlier in the book: the burnt offering, the cereal offering, the purification offering, and the reparation offering. The first 3 make sense, you have the purification offering to cleanse the sanctuary, the burnt offering that which brings reconciliation with God and a re-commitment to a life in His service, and the cereal offering, which is essentially a pledge of allegiance. The only thing that perhaps seems out of place is the reparation offering. If you recall, the reparation offering was made when there was a trespass against a sacred item. This could be here, then, under the thought that the sickness may have come about due to an unintended misuse or contact with a holy item in an impure state. It can’t be that the presence of these diseases is exclusively linked to the presence of sin (as we’ll see later in this chapter, houses can get it and houses don’t sin). Alternatively, the reparation offering is one that compensates God for loss, so it could also be that this offering is made for all of the missed offerings while the person was outside of the camp.

The rest of the chapter looks ahead to when the Israelites will be given the land of Canaan and occupy constructed houses (instead of tents). When disease is found in a house, the priest will confirm it and then, like with garments and people, put a quarantine on the joint to see if after a week it has spread. If it hasn’t, all is well and the house is clean, but the sacrifices with the birds have to be done just like they were for the person. (Obviously, the offerings aren’t done since since buildings just have to be clean, not in communion with God). If it has spread, however, the stones that have the persistent disease are to be removed and discarded outside of the camp. They are then replaced with new stones and re-plastered. If disease shows up again in the house, once the priest confirms it it is declared unclean and the house is to be torn down and all materials distributed outside the camp.