An Invisible Danger

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Leviticus 11
Taking precautions: like a surgeon preparing to operate
Leviticus 11:47 You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean.
For many years surgery remained a desperate last resort for the hopelessly
ill. Surgeons knew nothing about germs. Without washing, they would don
operating garb, usually an old coat caked with blood and pus from numerous
operations. They would pick up the scalpel, wiped clean with an old rag after
the last operation, and go to work. Half of those operated on died.
One pioneer after another stumbled on the correct sterile techniques. But each
was scorned and humiliated by fellow doctors. Professor Ignaz Semmelweis, for
one, discovered that making doctors wash their hands could dramatically cut
the death rate in maternity wards. Yet his colleagues opposed Semmelweis
strenuously, and though he argued for handwashing throughout his life, he died
without seeing his ideas take hold.
Why So Slow?
Why were doctors so slow to adopt sterile techniques? The answer is simple:
Germs had not yet been discovered. Doctors could not seeand reformers like
Semmelweis could not give themany reason why washing hands should make a
difference.
Then Louis Pasteur discovered micro-organisms under his microscope. Sterile
procedures began to make sense: They made war on germs. Even so, each
reform, from rubber gloves to gauze masks, was accepted only grudgingly and with
considerable opposition. It was as though doctors had a hard time remembering
that something invisible could be so devastating. Fifty years of constant
education and reform were necessary before sterile technique became a
routine part of surgery, and germs became real to most medical minds.
Why All the Rules?
As germs are to a surgeon, uncleanness is to Leviticus. Leviticus 1115
describe elaborate precautionswhat animals to avoid and how to treat
unclean skin disease, mildewed clothing or walls and bodily emissions.

Scholars point out that many clean and unclean rules have good health habits
behind them, such as the rule to quarantine a person with an infectious
disease or the rule against eating pork (which carries many parasites).
Others say that dietary laws were meant to keep the Israelites apart from
their neighbors. Pigs were prominent in Canaanite worship; therefore the
Israelites were not to eat pigs. A different dietary standard would keep the
two groups from mixing socially, for a meal was always part of Middle Eastern
hospitality.
Still other scholars suggest that the uncleanness rules simply fit into what
Israelites intuitively thought proper. God was reinforcing a natural sense of
repulsion toward creeping insects, scavenger birds, bodily emissions and skin
diseases.
The Habit of Carefulness
All these explanations have merit, but the underlying basis of clean and
unclean was religious. Being unclean was not dangerous or wrong. In fact, you
could hardly avoid it. Practically everyone became unclean from time to
time. But you could not worship God in the tent of meeting while you were
unclean, nor bring anything unclean into the presence of God. His holiness
would destroy itand you (see Leviticus 15:31).
So Leviticus trains Gods people to watch their lives as carefully as surgeons
watch their sterile techniques. They must develop the habit of carefulness,
even about something they cannot see or feel. They must think about preparing
themselves for God, not just do whatever feels right.
It was not a question of how they felt about God, any more than a surgeons
concern is how he feels about germs. Clear, absolute standards laid out what
could be acceptable to a God who is perfectly clean, absolute, unchanging.
Just as surgeons had to struggle to take germs seriously, so Gods people must
learn to purify themselves for God.
Touching the Unclean
The uncleanness rules of Leviticus are outmoded because of Jesus declaration
that all things are clean (see Mark 7:19; see also Acts 10:916). But the
lessons behind these rules remain valid. God still may not be approached

carelessly. Each person must examine his or her life to be certain that Gods
purity is not violated.
Until Jesus day, the slow spread of uncleanness seemed irreversible. You
could avoid it, but you could not get rid of it. Contact with anything unclean
made you unclean yourself. Naturally, certain diseases, notably leprosy, were
twice cursed: They were both dangerous and unclean. You kept away from
leprosy, absolutely.
Then Jesus touched a man with leprosy, and the man became clean. Jesus
touched a woman suffering from internal bleeding, and she was healed. For the
first time, cleanness rather than uncleanness spread. The rules of Leviticus tell
how to avoid uncleanness. Contact with Jesus, however, changes the unclean to
clean.
Life Questions
Suppose sin were visiblesmall green spots that break out on the skin. Do you
think this would help people to take sin more seriously?
Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
.

Misidentification
Leviticus 13:17
Victims of leprosy, or Hansen's disease, have endured untold suffering because earlier
versions of the Bible translated as "leprosy" the Hebrew word for "infectious skin disease"
mentioned in this chapter. The symptoms described here have little to do with leprosy, a
disease of the nerves--not skin--which is barely contagious.
--------------------------------------------------------Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved

Of Scallops and Rabbits

Leviticus 11:47
Scholars have long puzzled over the seemingly arbitrary division between "clean" and
"unclean" foods. Why permit the eating of certain fish but not shrimp, and cows but not
pigs? "An Invisible Danger," page 000, discusses some of the theories that have been
proposed. Probably the best explanation is that God was indeed being arbitrary, in order to
form a nation different from any other (see 20:26). In Acts 10 God shows there is nothing
intrinsically wrong with the animals labelled "unclean" in Leviticus.
--------------------------------------------------------Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Bible NIV
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 SoftKey Multimedia Inc. All Rights Reserved
UNCLEAN, UNCLEANNESS (Heb. tumah, uncleanness, defilement, niddah, separation,
impurity, erwah, erwath davar, unclean things, tame, defiled unclean, tame, to make or
declare unclean, Gr. akatharsia, miasmos, pollution, akathartos, unclean, koinoo, to defile,
miano, to defile, molyno, to make filthy, spiloo, phtheiro, to corrupt). All Israel's restricted
foods, unlike those of some other nations, involved the flesh of animals--differentiating the
clean from the unclean mammals (Lev 11:1-8, 26-28), sea creatures (11:9-12), birds (11:1325), and creeping things (11:29-38). Nothing that died of itself was fit for their food, nor
were they to eat anything strangled. Blood was a forbidden part of their diet.
A dead person, regardless of the cause of death, made anyone who touched the body
unclean (Num 19:22). Likewise anything the body touched (19:22) or the enclosure in
which the person died was made unclean (19:14-19). Those who touched the carcass of an
animal became unclean (Lev 11:24-28). Certain types of creeping things that died made
anything they touched unclean. Some objects thus touched could be cleansed by washing,
whereas others had to be destroyed (11:29-37).
Leprosy, being a type of sin, was looked on as unclean whether it was in people, houses, or
clothing. God required the person pronounced leprous by the priest to identify himself in a
prescribed manner and to separate himself from the rest of the people. Any time anyone
drew near to him, he was to cry "Unclean, unclean." Since this disease was also very
contagious, detailed instructions were given for dealing with it (Lev 13-15).
Whatever the seminal fluid that issued from the body touched became unclean. This applied
also to certain other kinds of issues (Lev 15:1-33). Childbirth made a woman unclean, and
special instructions were given for cleansing (ch. 13).
In the NT one notes the cumbersome systems of defilement developed by the scribes and
Pharisees, which Jesus condemned. Only four restrictions were placed on the new believers
(Acts 15:28-29). In the New Testament era, uncleanness has become moral, not ceremonial.