Deuteronomy 11-19: You'd Think These Laws Would Be Organized Better

I'm behind in my blogging again, so I'm going to lump several chapters together again.  Deuteronomy turns out to be really interesting.  The majority of the information has already been given in Exodus through Numbers, but there is stuff in here that I don't remember reading before (but then again, I don't even remember reading it from the last time I read Deuteronomy, so it could very well be in one of the other books and I just can't remember that far back).

Here's an overview of what goes on here:

• 11:1-32 Rewards for obedience
  
• 12:1-27 Instructions on where to offer sacrifices
  
• 12:28-32 Don't follow the religion of the other nations
• 13:1-18 Idolatry is punishable by death
  
• 14:1-22 Clean and unclean animals
• 14:23-29 Tithes
• 15:1-19 Slavery and the Sabbatic Year
• 15:20-23 Firstborn animals
• 16:1-17 Holidays
• 16:18-22 Appointing Judges
• 17:1-7 Punishing idolatry again
• 17:8-13 Difficult cases to be judged by Levites
• 17:14-20 Laws for appointing a king
• 18:1-8 Providing for the Levites
• 18:9-14 Sorcery, spiritism, witchcraft, etc forbidden
• 18:15-22 Prophets, true and false
• 19:1-13 Cities of refuge; manslaughter versus murder
• 19:14-21 False Witnesses

 As you can see, those are a lot of different topics, and it really kind of jumps around a lot.  There are a couple of one-sentence laws tucked in there too that I didn't list.  As something of an organization freak, this sort of drives me crazy, and I wonder if there's a reason for ordering it all like this, or if Moses is just speaking as he remembers something, or what.

So here are some things that I find interesting:

1.  Location of offering sacrifices.  Burnt offerings, it appears, could not be offered just anywhere; the people would have to go to a designated location.  Judging by the context, it seems that the purpose of this was to prevent people from using the pagan places of worship (and we'll find out why later on).  They were supposed to completely destroy every pagan altar and votive and object of worship so they wouldn't be tempted to start using those things.

2.  I think tithing, as it is described in the Bible, has been really misunderstood.  In chapter 14 it says that the tithe is a portion of a person's harvest, which that person is supposed to take to the designated place of worship and eat, or if they couldn't carry it all, they could exchange the crops for money or oxen or wine or anything they wanted and take that to the designated place of worship and eat it there.  Then every three years they were to take that tithe and give it to the Levites in their town for them to eat.  That sounds very different to me from the 10% of our income given to the church every month that I've heard about all my life.  I'm not saying it's bad to give money to the church - I think it's very important - I just don't think it's the same thing as a tithe.

3.  Slavery.  Slavery in ancient Israel, at least according to the Law, was really different from modern slavery like what we practiced before the abolition.  Slavery among Hebrews was a temporary state; ever seven years, the slaves were to be set free - and more than that, their owners were supposed to load them with money and livestock so they wouldn't have to start over with nothing.  Every time the Law mentions slaves and the poor and orphans and stuff like that, it says, "remember that you were slaves in Egypt."  I think maybe God let Israel be in slavery so long so that they would learn to have compassion on the poor once they became rich.  I don't know if it worked out that way, but that was the idea.

4.  God knew that Israel was going to want to have a king eventually, so He even made provisions for that.  He said the king wasn't supposed to accumulate wealth or possessions or wives or anything that would turn his heart away from God or make him think he was better than his countrymen.  Yeah, none of those rules were kept.  It also says that the king was supposed to have the Law written on a scroll to be kept next to him so he could read it every day his whole life - now if that rule had been followed, maybe the Hebrew monarchy would have turned out better than it did.

Numbers 26-29: A New Generation

I'm kind of behind in my blogging so I'll try to lump several chapters together.

When we get to chapter 26, the forty years of wandering have now passed (I guess it's assumed that the last few chapters took place during those 40 years).  So it starts out with a census of the new generation.  The population of the Hebrews has grown by just about 1000, which is not very much.  Upon closer inspection of the numbers, we find that some tribes have actually decreased considerably in size, while others have grown considerably.  Check out this before and after:

Tribe------------Before -------------After
Reuben---------46,500-------------43,730
Simeon---------59.300-------------22,200
Gad------------46,650-------------40,500
Judah-----------74,600------------76,500
Issachar--------54,400-------------64,300
Zebulun--------57,400-------------60,500
Ephraim--------40,500-------------32,500
Manasseh------32,200-------------52,700
Benjamin-------35,400-------------45,600
Dan------------62,700-------------64,400
Asher----------41,500-------------53,400
Naphtali--------53,400------------45,400

Now, these numbers represent every male of fighting age - that is, 20 or older - not every person in each tribe.  The Levites didn't fight and didn't have an inheritance in the promised land (a section of land allotted to them), so they weren't numbered in with the rest, but in this passage we find out that there are 23,000 males a month old and older.  So they must be a much smaller tribe all around.

I think it's interesting that so many of the tribes shrunk in number.  I wonder if it's that they just had a lot of old people and not a lot of kids, or that they had more girls than boys, or that a lot of them died in the plagues and things.  This is supposed to be the new generation, though, so most of these people were either kids or not born yet when their parents were dying of plagues and things.  But I guess a lot of people died in plagues who would have still had children, and by that means the number of births dropped.

Anyway, a cool thing happens in chapter 27.  This guy named Zelophehad (hereafter Z) has died, although he wasn't one of Korah's rebels from chapter 16, and he has no sons - only five daughters, all of whom are unmarried at this point.  They ask Moses to give them their father's inheritance (land in the promised land) to keep in his name.  I am going to assume this was unheard of in these days.  Even in modern times, land usually passed to the next direct male rather than the next direct person.  That's the initial conflict in Pride and Prejudice, which takes place around 1810 - the Bennetts' estate Longbourn is entailed by default on heirs male, so their five daughters are going to get nothing when Mr. Bennett dies.  Not every estate was handled this way (Miss Anne de Bourgh, only child of Sir Lewis and Lady Catherine, inherits all of Rosings Park), but it was common.  But God tells Moses, when he asks him, that Z's daughters are right in saying they should have an inheritance, and makes a law that any man who dies with no male heir should give his property to his daughters, and if there are no children it goes to his brother and so forth.  It's still primarily keeping the land to the male heirs, but I think it's really progressive and decent not to take a guy's land away from his family just because he doesn't have a son.

Then we find out that Joshua, Moses' assistant, is going to be the next Moses, and there's a ceremony for the transfer of power - kind of like what they did with Aaron and Eleazar, only in the sight of the whole congregation.  I wonder why they didn't go up on a mountain.  Maybe because Aaron went up the mountain to die and Moses wasn't going to die yet, or maybe because the people needed to see God put His stamp of approval on Joshua so they'd listen to him better than they listened to Moses.  I don't know.

The next two chapters are laws again.  In chapter 28, it sure sounds like there are a lot of sacrifices.  It sounds like they had to sacrifice two male lambs every day as a burnt offering - a continual offering.  Then every Sabbath there was an additional sacrifice of two lambs, and another burnt offering at the first of each month, and then the Passover lamb, and the sacrifices during the Feast of Weeks, and of course each of those had a drink offering and grain offerings to go along with the burnt offering.  Additionally, there was a seven-day holiday during the seventh month, in which there were sacrifices to be offered every day, grain offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings and so forth.  That's a lot of stuff!  I suppose God had to bless them just so they'd have enough sheep to sacrifice every day.  I suppose the reason for all this was, again, to point out the people's constant need for God.  I think the idea behind the continual burnt offerings was to tell people that  they were never in a state of perfect harmony with God - there was always a barrier between them and Him, and they always needed something to go between them and God.  We're not just separated from God by our sinful actions; we're separated from God by our nature, because He is holy and we are not.  God is not one of us, even though we are made in His likeness.  I suppose in order to remove the need for those offerings - in order for man and God to have a direct relationship with nothing in the way, God would have to become one of us.  But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Numbers 18-20: Who Will Mourn You?

I'm going to focus on two very small parts of these three chapters, but here are my notes/thoughts on the whole passage.

• Chapter 18 is about duties of the Levites.  It says that they will "bear the guilt in connection with the sanctuary."  Does anybody know what that means?  I may have to look it up.
• This is interesting.  In chapter 19 the priests have to slaughter a heifer in the presence of Eleazar (Aaron's son, the next high priest), and then burn it and place its ashes outside the camp.  Those ashes would be used when somebody was unclean, to cleanse them.  I'm not sure if they placed the ashes in water, or if the ashes somehow represent water, because it says they're kept "as water to remove impurity" and speaks about people washing in it.  Anyway, this is what Hebrews 9:13 is talking about when it mentions "the ashes of a heifer" cleansing people outwardly.  I always wondered what that was talking about.
• Then it talks about people who are in contact with a dead person being unclean for 7 days.  If a person died in their tent, everyone in the tent was unclean too, and any jar or anything that didn't have a lid on it was unclean.  I think this must have been one of those sanitation things.  People didn't know about germs until the 1800s so they didn't know why people would get sick from being around someone else who was sick, and they also didn't know how long germs could live or anything like that.  So this was a way of keeping disease from spreading, I think.
• At the beginning of chapter 20, Miriam dies.  The heading "Death of Miriam" is over the first seven verses in my Bible, but the only part that's actually about her is verse 1.
• Then we have another water incident.  This is the part where God tells Moses to speak to a rock and it'll bring forth water, so what does Moses do?  He hits the rock, because that's the method that worked before.  And for this, God tells him he will not enter the promised land, because he didn't trust God to provide - he fell back on something that had worked earlier, maybe because he thought the power was in his staff or how hard he struck the rock and not in God who doesn't really need Moses to do anything in order to make water come from a rock.
• The people reach Edom - if that name sounds familiar, it's the other name for Esau, and it's now the name of the land where his descendants are living.  The Israelites send a message asking to travel peacefully through the land and promise to stay on the highway - they won't even touch the wells to get a drink - and Edom says "no way, get out of here."  I think this shows that the old sibling rivalry is still very much alive and well.  I'm proud of what Israel does, though. Instead of getting mad and attacking Edom, they travel all the way around the country to get where they're going next.
  
• At the end of the chapter, Aaron dies.  He gets seven verses.  What happens is he goes up to a mountain and his priest uniform gets put on his son Eleazar, and then Aaron dies.
  

As you have probably guessed, I'm focusing this post on comparing the deaths of Miriam and Aaron.  This is what the text says about Miriam's death:  "Now Miriam died there and was buried there."  She doesn't even get a full verse because the first part of the verse just says that they arrived in the wilderness of Zin and the people stayed at Kadesh.

This is what the text says about Aaron's death:
"Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron at Mount Hor by the border of the land of Edom, saying, Aaron will be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel, because you rebelled against My command at the waters of Meribah.  Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar.  So Aaron will be gathered to his people, and will die there."  So Moses di just as the LORD had commanded, and they went up to Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation.  After Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar, Aaron died there on the mountain top.  Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain.  When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days."

Quite a bit of difference, isn't there?  We don't even know how Miriam died or whether people mourned for her.  With Aaron we get a whole story - that's more than what we got with Abraham, if you can remember back that far.  And we find that people mourned him thirty days.  Remember when Ronald Reagan died, and Bush commanded that all flags be raised to half-mast for thirty days?  That's not what this was like.  Mourning was something very important to ancient people - in fact, some people could do it professionally.  It involved sackcloth and fasting and wailing and all that sort of thing - it was a big deal, and it did usually last for a few days as far as I can recall.  But this was hardcore.

What I find really great about this passage is that it happens right after the waters of Meribah incident, where God tells Moses and Aaron that because of their lack of trust, they won't enter the promised land.  The last significant event in Aaron's life was a screw-up.  And still he gets to go up to a mountain to die in peace next to his brother and his son, and he gets a celebrity funeral.  I think it goes to show, you don't have to have lived a perfect life to die a good death.  But in contrast with Miriam's death, I think it also shows that you're not going to get an epigram like that unless there's a good reason for it.  Aaron may have been number two to Moses for most of his life, and he may have griped and complained about it, and he was even the one who made the golden calf back in Exodus, but he was the high priest of Israel, handpicked by God for a divine purpose.  And the people may have whined about God playing favorites with Moses and Aaron, but when one of their leaders died, they felt it so deeply that they showed him tremendous honor in his death.

I guess it's just something to think about.  Who would mourn you for thirty days when you die?

Numbers 5-10: We're Following the Leader

I'm back! After a long hiatus, I decided to pick up right where I left off and finish the Bible - and this blog - by the end of the year. So, let's get started.

When we last left off, Moses had counted all the men of Israel by tribes and God had explained the duties of the priests. We pick up with more ceremonial and religious duties in chapters 5-6.

Now, there's a part in the middle of chapter 5 that I don't really get: it's the test for adultery. If a husband got suspicious that his wife was having an affair, but he didn't have any witnesses, the process of finding out if it was true was to take her to the temple with an offering, and the priest would take a bowl of water and put some dust in it and make the woman drink it. If she got sick, she was guilty; if she didn't, she was innocent. What the heck? Well, apparently tests for unchastity were common - even universal - in ancient times. The thing is, as weird as it sounds, this test provided the suspected wife with some protection. Without witnesses, it would be the husband's word against the wife's, and in that culture, the man always won the argument. By requiring him to put her to some kind of trial, the husband was prevented from just acting on his suspicion and divorcing his wife (or something else). The manner of trial also clearly took the power out of the hands of man. The husband couldn't manipulate the judge to pronounce his wife guilty, because the judge was God. I wonder how well this trial system worked out.

Chapter 6 talks about the vows of Nazirites. I'm not going to go into that, but it's kind of neat to read.

In chapter 7, the tabernacle is anointed and consecrated, and at the same time, each of the twelve tribes presents and offering to the tabernacle, one tribe each day, presented by a leader of that tribe. The offering is exactly the same for each tribe: "one silver dish whose weight was one hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering; one gold pan of ten shekels, full of incense, one bull, one ram, one male lamb one year old, for a burnt offering; one male goat for a sin offering; and for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five male lambs one year old." That's a lot of stuff, and it says that twelve times, along with who gave the offering, who their father was, what tribe they were from, and which day they presented their offering. That's the whole chapter. Now, several years ago when I read the Bible before, this is exactly the sort of thing that I would skip over. But I made sure to read every word this time. Why? I don't know, I think it's important. I'm not sure if there's any special reason for listing each tribe separately even though they all gave the same thing; maybe it's just an affirmation of the distinctness of each group in spite of their unity under God. I'm not sure.

Chapter 8 is about cleansing the Levites and the terms of their service (they got to retire at 50!).

In chapter 9, God tells the Israelites to observe Passover again, but a few people ask Moses what they should do if they're ceremonially unclean during that time. What I find very interesting here is that instead of just answering right off the bat, Moses says, "Wait, and I will listen to what the LORD will command concerning you." And the Bible actually makes a point of saying that. I think this is very important, and it ties into the next thing that happens. It talks about the cloud that settled over the tabernacle - the presence of the LORD - and how the people followed it. It says that when the cloud lifted, the people set out and followed the cloud, and when the cloud settled on the tabernacle, the people made camp and stayed there as long as the cloud stayed. The text makes this point about four or five times:

"At the command of the LORD the sons of Israel would set out, and at the command of the LORD they would make camp. . . . the sons of Israel woul dkeep the LORD's charge. . . according to the command of the LORD they remained camped. Then according to the command of the LORD they set out. . . . At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out; they kept the LORD's charge, according to the command of the LORD through Moses."

In chapter 10, that is exactly what happens: the cloud lifts and the people start to move. It tells you in what order the tribes are lined up, and it looks like everybody is just revved up about following their God wherever he leads them.

If I could come up with a theme for these six chapters, it is this: wait for God to judge, wait for God to speak, wait for God to move. And for a brief moment in history, we see it actually happening with the Israelites. Don't get too comfortable though; next time I post things are going to be different.

Numbers 1-4: Let's Talk Math

It took me a while to get this far, because honestly, this book gave me some trouble from the beginning. I kept getting distracted by the fact that there were so many dang Israelites, and I didn't know if the numbers in the Bible were reasonable. I since found a site that really helped me out (click here).

Anyway. This is a difficult book for me to read when I'm trying to learn things about God. Why? Because so far it's a lot of lists and counts and repetition. It's very easy to start skimming and write it off as not important. I mean, how many sermons have you ever heard on any of the first four of Numbers? Speaking for myself, I haven't heard any (although I'm sure there have been some - my parents' church is reading through the Bible in a year and the sermons each Sunday reflect the week's readings).

I was going to do the first six chapters in this post, but chapters 5 and 6 are really on a different subject, so I'll do those next.

Here's the first four chapters of this book in a nutshell:

• Chapter 1: All the men in Israel who are of fighting age (20 or older) are counted. The heads of each tribe and the number of fighting men in each tribe is given. The Levites aren't numbered because they don't fight.
• Chapter 2: God tells Moses where each tribe should camp (north side, west side, etc.), and it tells you again who the head of each tribe is and how many fighting men are in each tribe, in case you had forgotten.
• Chapter 3: Now the Levites get numbered (all the males 1 month old and up), but they are given jobs in the tabernacle. Each clan has a different area of focus. Then all the firstborn sons of Israel are numbered, and the numbers of the Levites are supposed to match up, but there are 273 fewer Levites so the Levites get 5 shekels for every man they lack. This is part of the redemption of the firstborn thing that I'll come back to.
• Chapter 4: The duties of each of the three Levite clans are explained, and they're counted again but only the men between ages 30-50.
  

So as you can see, not a lot happens. What can we learn about God from this passage? What does the author, Moses or whoever, want us to know from reading this?

I think the first and most obvious answer is history. Judaism revolves around the exodus from Egypt. What happened between Goshen and Canaan is not only the basis their holidays, dietary customs, and moral code; it is their heritage. My family has this book of genealogical records that reads like this:

1. (first and last name) and wife, (first and last name).
1. (1st kid's name)
2. (2nd kid's name)
3. (3rd kid's name, etc.)
2. (1st kid's name) and wife, (first and last name).
1. (1st kid's name)
2. (2nd kid's name)

You get the picture. That's all the book is. Why the heck would somebody want to write about that? Because it's history. It tells me where I came from and to whom I belong. There's not a single complete sentence, or even a verb, in the whole thing, but from reading it I learn a lot about my past. I think Numbers is kind of the same way.

In keeping with that, I think another main point of Numbers is that it's history, not fantasy. The numbers in this book are intended as real numbers. Figurative and symbolic numbers in the Bible are generally 3, 7, 10, 12, and 40 (and a few multiples), along with "ten thousand times ten thousand" and "seventy times seven." The author of this book intends for the audience to know that what they are reading is a real story.

Let's keep going with that thought. When God spoke to Abraham and promised to make him a great nation, He gave a figurative number as well: "as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as countless as the sand on the seashore" - that's how many descendants Abraham would have, right? Now in Numbers, we see that God has turned that figurative number into a real number. The promise that existed only as an idea for so long has become a reality, and we can see that the Hebrews are a huge group of people, perhaps 2 million or more in total. God was faithful to Abraham in making his descendants numerous, and because of that, we can trust that God will be faithful to give Abraham's descendants the land He promised them as well, even though we won't see it happen for a few more books.

Now I would like to talk about the redemption of the firstborn. This seems to come up a lot in the Torah, and always under different circumstances. We first saw in Exodus 13 that God said the firstborn of every human and animal belonged to Him and was sanctified (set apart), because of the plague of the firstborn that freed the Hebrews from slavery. Because of this, every firstborn had to be redeemed (bought back). The animals and the sons were redeemed by sacrificing a lamb. Next, in Exodus 22:29-30, we see God mention giving the firstborn of their sons to Him again. Exodus 34 repeats what we saw in chapter 13. Finally here, in Numbers 3:40-51, it says that the firstborn sons are redeemed moreover by the Levites, who do not own any land or fight in battle but are constantly serving as priests, intercessors between God and man. That's why there were supposed to be as many Levites as there were firstborn sons, but they were just short so they had to substitute with money.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what all the symbolism behind this concept means. On the surface, it's plain that God wanted the people to know they belonged to Him, and that their possessions - whether livestock or their own children - were a gift that He had given and could take away, as He took the firstborn of all Egypt. I feel like there's more to this, but I don't know what. If anybody has studied this passage, please elaborate on it for me.

Numbers is a difficult book because it appears so surfacey. I think, though, that there's a lot more depth to it, and that the more I read it the more I will understand. As I posted in my Xanga the other day, I'm glad that I don't understand this book very well, because it reminds me of how much more the Bible has to teach me.

Leviticus 9-15: Clean and Unclean

Well, it's been a while, but I'm going to do a big chunk (maybe two chunks) today so I can keep moving.

This part is all about what makes something ceremonially unclean, and what you're supposed to do when something (or, yes, someone) becomes unclean. It's pretty weird, but sort of neat. Some thoughts:

Chapter 9
(This is about Aaron offering sacrifices before God, after all the preceding chapters about how to do so)

• I wonder sometimes why Aaron was chosen to be the high priest instead of Moses, and why there's not much in the Bible about him if he was so important. I suppose Moses was too busy to be the high priest. Still, I find it interesting.
• There's a lot of instructions about how to present an offering to God. Why was the method - or formula, we could say - so important? If there was nothing inherently special, spiritual, or magical about the animals (or their various body parts), why did it matter what the priest did with which parts? I really don't know.
• In verse 24, when Aaron offers the sacrifice, fire shoots out and burns up all the stuff on the altar, and the people freak out and fall down. I love that. They've already seen God do a bunch of awesome stuff, but it never gets old.

Chapter 10

• Right at the beginning of this chapter, Aaron has two sons named Nadab and Abihu who put some weird incense that wasn't God-approved on the altar, and they die because of it. This is what I wrote in my notes when I read that: Harsh! What did they do that for? They knew the rules, and God made a really big deal about following them - like, the last NINE LONG CHAPTERS that have taken me forever to get through were all about how to do a sacrifice and how important it was and what it meant and all that. How could they just blow all that off? No wonder God was mad at them. I'm mad at them. That's likw how I feel when people post things on the board that I've expressly said "Do NOT do this!" Still, I'm sad that they died. That seems really rough.
• In verse 6, Israel mourns the deaths of Aaron' sons, even though Moses doesn't let the mourn. That must have been really hard on them, since obviously they're the ones who would be the most sad over it. But I am glad that they didn't prohibit everyone from mourning. In fact, Moses said that the whole house of Israel would "beail the burning which the LORD has brought about."
• I don't understand what happens in verses 16-20. Moses goes looking for the goat of a sin offering that they just offered, but it had been all burned up, so Moses goes to Aaron's sons (the ones who are still alive) and asks them why they didn't eat it, and Aaron says it's because his sons were burned up and it wouldn't have been good in the eyes of the LORD for him and his sons to eat the sin offering today. And Moses goes "oh, okay," and that's the end of the chapter. I don't get it. There must be some significance to all this stuff that I'm missing.

Chapter 11
(This part is about clean and unclean animals)

• It's really weird to me that animals which have split hooves and chew the cud are clean. I mean, it's not a random selection of different animals, or even based so much on what they eat or anything. I suppose God could have made "clean" animals that didn't have cloven hooves, but he gave all the animals he wanted the Israelites to eat those two things in common. How funny. I mean, with the fish it makes more sense: scales and fins. That's pretty general. Hooves and digestive process just seems so weird to me.
• We all know that the pig is considered an abomination to the Jews (as well as to Muslims and Hindus). But it's not the only animal that was unclean. I wonder why it became the sort of poster child of unclean animals.
• I also think it's weird that God never says why certain animals were unclean. Today we think it's because of sanitation and preventing disease and whatnot. But God doesn't tell the Israelites that, and I'm sure they didn't know about bacteria and all that to figure it out. But then again, maybe it wouldn't have done much good to tell them why because they didn't know anything about that stuff. So maybe sometimes God doesn't answer our "why" questions because the answers would be more confusing than the questions.

Chapter 12 (it's okay, this one is really short)

• Now, this chapter is really funny to me. It's about how when a woman has a baby, she becomes unclean for a certain amount of time. If it's a boy, she's unclean for a week, and on the eighth day when the boy is circumcised, that's when she enters a purification period of 33 . But if it's a girl, she's unclean for two weeks and has a purification period of 66 days. Why? I'd also like to know what the practical implications of this whole unclean period are. Is that kind of like maternity leave? Or is it a purely ceremonial thing that has no connection to "practical" matters like the unclean animals do?
• What I do like about this chapter is that it tells what sacrifice to bring to the Lord when your kid is born. You're supposed to bring a lamb, but if you're too poor for that you bring a pair of turtledoves or pigeons. I think it's neat that God has different requirements like that. And notice, He doesn't just make it so that -everyone- has to bring birds. If you can afford a lamb, that's what you should bring.

Chapter 13-14
(These two are about leprosy, or icky skin diseases, and what to do about them)

• The closest Israel got to having doctors was priests. They had to be able to tell what was just a scab and what was a serious disease, and they had to tell people how to treat each. Nasty job if you ask me. What really sucks is, there wasn't any treatment for disease, whether it was leprosy or just a burn. Pretty much you just wrap it up and try to stay away from people so you don't infect them. I wonder why God didn't give them more information about medical treatments? Lots of other ancient people groups had herbal remedies for all kinds of things (don't know about leprosy though). Well, maybe Hebrews did use herbs for things too, and we just don't know about it. But this leprosy stuff was apparently highly contagious, so people really had to stay away for their own good. I wonder if it was risky for the priests to be looking at their sores and stuff.
• All of chapter 14 is about cleansing a leper and his house and stuff, so apparently people did recover from it. That's really encouraging. But not everybody did.

Chapter 15
(This chapter is just weird. It's about, um, bodily discharge)

• Okay, first of all, why is this chapter in the Bible? This is like TMI to the nth degree for me! Now, it is my opinion that some books have a sort of personality, as though they were almost people themselves, separate from their authors (if you are an author, or if you have listened to one talk about their books, you understand how this is possible). And the Bible is called a "living book" so I think I can say it has more personality than other books, and its personality is totally candid. It is not at all apologetic when it talks about nasty stuff, or about deep stuff, or hard-to-believe stuff, or stuff that you just wish wasn't in there. It puts all its cards on the table, face-up, as it were. This chapter is an example of that. Now, I really don't know why this was so super-important to God or to Israel, but it apparently was worth writing 33 verses about (the baby chapter only has 8 verses), so we mustn't overlook it.
• What I do find interesting here (yes, I said interesting) is that no matter what kind of discharge a person has, at the end of it they have to bring birds for a sin offering and for a burnt offering. Now, the text doesn't treat any of these things like sins. The people don't get punished for them, and generally it's something that the person can't help (like menstruation). But you have to offer a sin offering anyway, and I wonder why that is.

So that was a lot of really weird stuff in those chapters. Burning, dying, eating, scabbing, birthing, discharging, sacrificing stuff. All I can say is, no wonder Hebrews says that the Law is only a shadow of the things to come.