Imamat 12:4

12:4 Then she will remain ¹  thirty-three days in blood purity. ²  She must not touch anything holy and she must not enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled. ³ 

Imamat 15:19

Female Bodily Discharges

15:19 “‘When a woman has a discharge ⁴  and her discharge is blood from her body, ⁵  she is to be in her menstruation ⁶  seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean until evening.

Imamat 18:23

18:23 You must not have sexual intercourse ⁷  with any animal to become defiled with it, and a woman must not stand before an animal to have sexual intercourse with it; ⁸  it is a perversion. ⁹ 

Imamat 20:27

Prohibition against Spiritists and Mediums

20:27 “‘A man or woman who ¹⁰  has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit ¹¹  must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; ¹²  their blood guilt is on themselves.’”

[12:4]  ¹ tn Heb “sit, dwell” (יָשָׁב, yashav) normally means “to sit, to dwell”), but here it means “to remain, to stay” in the same condition for a period of time (cf., e.g., Gen 24:55).

[12:4]  ² tn Heb “in bloods of purification” or “purifying” or “purity”; NASB “in the blood of her purification”; NRSV “her time of blood purification.” See the following note.

[12:4]  ³ tn The initial seven days after the birth of a son were days of blood impurity for the woman as if she were having her menstrual period. Her impurity was contagious during this period, so no one should touch her or even furniture on which she has sat or reclined (Lev 15:19-23), lest they too become impure. Even her husband would become impure for seven days if he had sexual intercourse with her during this time (Lev 15:24; cf. 18:19). The next thirty-three days were either “days of purification, purifying” or “days of purity,” depending on how one understands the abstract noun טֹהֳרָה (toharah, “purification, purity”) in this context. During this time the woman could not touch anything holy or enter the sanctuary, but she was no longer contagious like she had been during the first seven days. She could engage in normal everyday life, including sexual intercourse, without fear of contaminating anyone else (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 73-74; cf. J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:749-50). Thus, in a sense, the thirty-three days were a time of blood “purity” (cf. the present translation) as compared to the previous seven days of blood “impurity,” but they were also a time of blood “purification” (or “purifying”) as compared to the time after the thirty-three days, when the blood atonement had been made and she was pronounced “clean” by the priest (see vv. 6-8 below). In other words, the thirty-three day period was a time of “blood” (flow), but this was “pure blood,” as opposed to the blood of the first seven days.

[15:19]  ⁴ tn See the note on Lev 15:2 above.

[15:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “blood shall be her discharge in her flesh.” The term “flesh” here refers euphemistically to the female sexual area (cf. the note on v. 2 above).

[15:19]  ⁶ tn See the note on Lev 12:2 and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 1:925-27.

[18:23]  ⁷ tn See the note on v. 20 above.

[18:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “to copulate with it” (cf. Lev 20:16).

[18:23]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew term תֶּבֶל (tevel, “perversion”) derives from the verb “to mix; to confuse” and therefore refers to illegitimate mixtures of species or violation of the natural order of things.

[20:27]  ¹⁰ tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum mss have the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “who, which”), rather than the MT’s כִּי (ki, “for, because, that”).

[20:27]  ¹¹ tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.

[20:27]  ¹² tn This is not the most frequently-used Hebrew verb for stoning, but a word that refers to the action of throwing, slinging, or pelting someone with stones (see the note on v. 2 above). Smr and LXX have “you [plural] shall pelt them with stones.”

[20:27]  sn At first glance Lev 20:27 appears to be out of place but, on closer examination, one could argue that it constitutes the back side of an envelope around the case laws in 20:9-21, with Lev 20:6 forming the front of the envelope (note also that execution of mediums and spiritists by stoning in v. 27 is not explicitly stated in v. 6). This creates a chiastic structure: prohibition against mediums and spiritists (vv. 6 and 27), variations of the holiness formula (vv. 7 and 25-26), and exhortations to obey the Lord’s statutes (and judgments; vv. 8 and 22-24). Again, in the middle are the case laws (vv. 9-21).