Tag: laws

Leviticus Chapters 12 through 15

~ AlienCG ~ Leave a comment

Chapter 12

This chapter is about the purification of women after childbirth. If a women bears a male child, she is unclean for seven days (on the eighth, the boy gets the snip-snip) and her blood purification takes thirty-three days where she can’t touch anything holy or go into the sanctuary. Oh, double all of that if she has a girl because…of course.

After the purification, then she has to bring a lamb and pigeon to the tabernacle. The lamb is for a burnt offering and the pigeon is for a sin offering. Is that a sin offering because she is a woman or because she gave birth? My guess is the latter since it was in Genesis that God made childbirth a punishment.

Chapter 13

What’s that? You want to know everything about leprosy? You’ve come to the right chapter.

I am not going to go over everything in here because this is a long chapter and there is a lot of repetition. This chapter is regarding diseases of the skin and not just leprosy, but it’s all collected under the same banner. The priest examines the skin and makes his determination whether the person is clean or unclean and might require confinement. If it is determined to be leprosy, then that person’s clothing is burned. Of course, if the disease didn’t spread further, then only the section of cloth that touched the diseased tissue will be cut out.

I understand that people in those days had very little knowledge of diseases such as these, but the way this is written, it could have simply been a chart. I’m sure the cleansing process in the next chapter with be totally scientific.

Chapter 14

It’s not. Not. At. All.

The cleansing ritual is for a person who has apparently recovered will be sprinkled with bird blood. That doesn’t seem sanitary at all. I am not going to go through this chapter. It’s a lot of sprinkling of blood with cedarwood, red yarn, and hyssop. Also, tearing down houses if it’s believed that the disease is still in there.

I feel like it’s these previous two chapters that results in people believing that illness is a result of moral failure rather than a virus, bacteria, or genetics. There’s a lot of “guilt offering” or “sin offering” after a person recovers from a disease in these chapters. No, disease is not the result of sin.

Chapter 15

This whole chapter talks about bodily discharges including blood (for women), semen, and other discharges that sound like gonorrhea. Essentially, everything that people touch, sit on, or  wear during this time is unclean and they must be purified.

Naturally, the once the person is no longer having the discharge, then they have to burn animals, cut open birds, and pray at the tabernacle because they’re filthy sinners or something. They also have to bathe and wash their clothes.

Honestly, these past few chapters have been hard to read because of all of the repetition. Not only repetition within the chapters, but between the chapters. I mean, why couldn’t God make a chart? Put the animals and birds on one axis, the reason for the sacrifice on the other axis and then just put an X in the square. That would be a lot easier.

I feel like I could write this book better. Also, I don’t think anyone wants pictures for the last three chapters.

A Lot On My Mind

~ AlienCG ~ 2 Comments

My mind has been active this week thanks to my Twitter feed, the Bible, and just life in general. Allow me the chance to dump all of this on you right now. Thanks.

The week started off with Dr. Frank Turek tweeting,

Eternity is a concept that is impossible to quantify. As I wrote a while back regarding heaven and hell, eternal reward or punishment for doing finite good or for finite sins is disproportionate at best and immoral at worst. Also, if there is an eternity of bliss or torture after this life, then this life in comparison become but a blink of the eye which renders any meaning here useless to consider. No, this is our one only life. Spend it making the lives of others better by doing good things. Moving along now…

I read through seven chapters of Exodus to come up with Monday’s post, which was comparably short for seven chapters. That’s because in the eleven total chapters from where God first starts giving Moses the laws, the first four commandments and the final seven chapters are all about the care, feeding, and proper worship of the all-powerful God. There is also a large section about the proper treatment of slaves which, if God is all-knowing and all-good, he would not have allowed for the ownership of slaves in the first place. There is one small section that contains laws that make good sense explaining how not to be a jerk, but that’s about it. I could keep going on this thread, but I’m moving on.

I saw a lot of so-called pro-life Christians tweeting about the injunction on the Texas abortion law which got me thinking about gun culture in this country (the US, in case you didn’t know). I tweeted,

How is this perfectly okay? Sure, kids have fire drills and tornado drills, but the latter is an act of nature, the former could be an act of nature or due to human error. An active shooter drill is preparing for the actions of a person who woke up that morning and decided to take up arms and end the lives of children. Think about that.

Announcements:

I only put out one post this week because of all the stuff on my mind. I don’t like forcing myself to write about something in particular when there is so much other stuff going on in my head.

Not that I’ve mentioned it here at all, but I’ve come to a decision on the rest of the Pentateuch. Since it’s mostly laws, I am going to read it through, but I will only be touching on the items of interest that people tend to cite and ignore.

Also, while I have been on a regular posting schedule (Bible posts Monday and Thursday, and the Saturday Sermon), I am going to drop the schedule for the Bible posts. I will still post somewhat regularly, but I need to read other things, too.