Leviticus 11:1-47

11- 15. Ritual Cleanliness and Uncleanliness.

Leviticus 11, Animals; Leviticus 12, Childbirth; Leviticus 13, Skin diseases (including tainted garments); Leviticus 14:1, Purgation for skin diseases; Leviticus 14:33, Leprosy in houses, and general conclusion to the Law; Leviticus 15, Issues.

Probably to most modern readers, this section is the least intelligible in the book. We must consider it (a) in its ethnological and (b) its specifically Hebrew aspect, (a) These laws are properly taboos. The term is Polynesian, signifying what is in itself, or artificially, forbidden, either for the whole community, or else for common people, or priests, or kings (p. 629). Taboos may relate to places, or to the sexes, or to certain ages. Certain kinds of food may be taboo, universally, or as determined temporarily by a chief; individuals may be taboo to one another speech with a mother-in-law is very widely forbidden, and also approach to one's wife after childbirth; or the wife must not pronounce her husband's name. In the Australian initiation ceremonies, speaking is taboo to the initiates for certain periods. The origin of taboo is still obscure. What is not customary comes in time to excite horror (cf. the varying laws of decency in different primitive tribes). This horror is felt to be religious, and it can be easily used by chiefs or priests, for selfish or for hygienic purposes. (b) Heb. practice shows a notable restriction in the institution. In early times a chief could temporarily impose a ban (Joshua 6:18; 1 Samuel 14:24); and taboos are recognised on priests (Leviticus 10:6, etc.) and in connexion with animals, birth, and certain diseases. Why? From the nature of things, or for moral or hygienic or ritual reasons? The suggestion of Nature is an insecure guide, since taboos on animals (e.g, swine, holy animals among Greeks and Arabs) and actions (e.g. sexual rules) vary so widely. Morality will not explain taboos on animal flesh (save that perhaps some kinds of flesh may arouse passion) or the restriction on the young mother. Hygiene may explain some taboos; but why the restriction of food to animals Levitically clean, or why should a mother be unclean for forty days after the birth of a boy, eighty days after the birth of a girl? Ritual may explain some prohibitions, as of animals which were only used in heathen rites; it may be, as Bertholet suggests, that whatever is under the protection or power of an alien god is unclean or taboo (hence perhaps the rejection of horseflesh for food; horses were sacred among the heathen Saxons; camels are forbidden to Thibetan lamas). What, then, of the infected house? Probably all four reasons were operative; given the concept of things not to be associated with ordinary life, the class would grow by the addition of things which, for various reasons, were disliked. Note the traces of systemisation in the code. The connexion of the ideas underlying it with institutions so widespread in primitive thought shows that the law carries us back to a period far anterior to Moses, though the distinction between clean and unclean is not mentioned in Exodus 21-23. Clean must be distinguished from holy. The former is the condition of intercourse with all society; the latter of approach to God. Hence, there are grades of holiness; but uncleanness exhibits only differences of duration (until the evening, etc.). The holy and the unclean, however, are alike in being untouchable by man, though for different reasons; hence the Rabbinic phrase, used of canonical books, they defile the hands (p. 39). [We may infer from Haggai 2:11 that the infection of uncleanness was more virulent than the infection of holiness. Holy flesh could convey holiness to the skirt but the skirt could not convey it to the food it touched. The corpse could convey uncleanness to the person who touched it, and he in turn could convey it to the food. The holy communicates its quality only to one remove, the unclean to two. The reason is apparently that the holiness of a holy thing is always derivative, since nothing is holy in itself but becomes holy only through consecration to God, the sole fount of holiness (p. 196). A thing may, however, be unclean in itself. There are therefore really four terms in the holy, only three in the unclean series in this passage; viz. (a) God, holy flesh, skirt, food; (b) corpse, man unclean through contact, food. Holiness and uncleanness are thus each infectious at two removes from the source, but no further. A. S. P.] The section is probably not original in this place; it breaks the connexion between chs. 10 and 16. Some parts are distinct from the rest, e.g. Leviticus 11:24, Leviticus 11:43; Leviticus 13:1 must have been originally distinct from Leviticus 14:3. A similar code is found in Deuteronomy 14. Probably Deuteronomy 14 is a copy of an older version of Leviticus 11, e.g. Dt. omits the cormorant (17). In one respect Lev. is milder than Dt. (contrast Leviticus 11:39 f. with Deuteronomy 14:21). Lev. adds the permission of leaping insects, and gives a special direction as to fishes.