LEVITICUS 12

Q:  I'm struggling with Leviticus 12, about women being unclean for 40 days after bearing

 a male child but being unclean for 80 days after bearing a female child. I don't believe God would feel 

that way about his creation or denigrate females in that way. I don't believe God thinks I'm worth less 

than a man. I don't believe that God saw more value in a male child's birth than a female child's birth.

At the outset it is important to note that the commentators I consulted uniformly stated the difficulty in interpreting this chapter, especially in regard to the disparity in times for purification. But since it concerns regulations involving ritual cleanliness and purity, some general points need to be made before proceeding:

1. The purpose of the holiness laws “was one of God's ways of teaching Israel about barriers between the his holy nature and what was too physical and earthy, diseased or defiled – unclean.” (Allen P. Ross, Holiness to the LORD, p. 270)

2. But paradoxically, “...rather than being unclean or impure in the negative sense, the biblical state of ritual impurity is the result of contact with the sacred.” (D. Setel, The Oxford Companion to the Bible) This especially included contact with things relating to the birth and death of human beings such as (menstrual) blood or semen (see Lev. 15 for regulations regarding the latter). For example, Both J. N. Birdsall (“Canon of the Old Testament” in New Bible Dictionary, p. 190) and F. F. Bruce (The Canon of Scripture, p. 34) describe the deliberations of the rabbis at the Council of Jamnia ca. 90 AD concerning which books to consider as part of the Old Testament. Those that were included were said to “defile the hands” – a technical expression denoting those books which were the product of prophetic inspiration. This is the exact opposite way of our looking at things. Also, a comparison of the purification required after contacting a human corpse (Numbers 19) shows that it is more extended than if a mere animal carcass was touched (Leviticus 11).

3. Several commentators on Lev. 12 have stated that the idea a female child is somehow more ritually impure or of lesser social worth than a male has been soundly refuted. (Kaiser, p. 287; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, pp. 744-753)

Concerning the all-important Item 3 above, Solomon Zucrow is quoted in Kaiser's Ethics as saying, “the opposite can equally well be inferred, for it further enjoins that after the days of purification have passed the woman should be considered in a state of purity...in the case of a female child...twice as long as that in the case of a male child.” Or, one could easily argue on the basis of Item 2 above that the disparity in purification times actually demonstrates that God holds a female child of greater worth than a boy. In any case, those examples prove that “Greater defilement is not necessarily an indication of less social worth.” (Milgrom)

The question remains: “Why the longer time periods if a female is born compared to a male child?” There have been several attempts to make sense of this discrepancy, some more persuasive than others:

1. There appears to be a scholarly consensus that the first time period before declaring the woman clean was only reduced from 14 days to 7 days for birth of a boy so that both mother and child could be ritually clean for the circumcision ceremony on the eighth day (see Milgrom). The other explanations offered below deal with the second, and longer, time periods for complete ritual purification.

2. Milgrom says that “some have conjectured that the postnatal discharge for a female lasts longer.” To this, Wenham adds that “More recently a physician has argued that there is scientific justification for such a belief.”

3. Milgrom additionally says, “A biological distinction is proposed by Rabbi Ishmael; the male embryo is completely formed in forty-one days and the female in 81 days.” A similar belief was held (wrongly, of course) by other cultures in the ancient Near East.

4. There was the possibility of the newborn girl also bleeding vaginally, accounting for the doubling of time, or simply the fact that two women (one a future menstruant) instead of one were involved. (Ross, p. 271; J. E. Hartley in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, p. 427)