Leviticus 15:29, commentary and pictures

Leviticus 15:29 belongs to the instructions in Leviticus 12-15 dealing with various forms of uncleanness, including the laws regulating uncleanness and leprosy. The chapter sets restrictions for an infectious disease to prevent its spread, involving isolation, washing, running water, fresh air, and sunshine as simple sanitation practices that helped prevent contagion and epidemics. The verse places the woman's purification offering on the eighth day, when she became clean after her defilement.

After the required purification the person was to be visibly clean before the sanctuary's cleansing with blood, and this visible cleansing prepared for but was distinct from the ritual cleansing. The book everywhere emphasizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the offering of two turtledoves or two young pigeons brought to the priest is one of the mighty object-lessons given for that reason. Leprosy in these laws is presented as a fitting type of sin.

Like all the sacrifices, the offering is a type of Jesus Christ, with the slain birds pointing forward to the Lamb of God who removes the sin of the world, and as part of the Levitical sanctuary service its yearly cycle of rites typified Christ's ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. The eighth day on which cleanness is reached serves as a type of the new creation. These cleansing laws were types and examples for later believers, teaching them not to turn away from the cleansing truths given to them, and the verse is included among the laws connected with the call to cleanliness and the preparation of clean vessels for God's Spirit. When Christ is seen in it, these otherwise dry details of laws and regulations are given new life and made a blessing to the reader.