Certain laws in the Old Testament make little sense to modern readers. For example, in Leviticus we read:
If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. As at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. . . . She shall not touch anything holy, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed. (Lev. 12:1–7)
When any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge is unclean. And this is the law of his uncleanness for a discharge: whether his body runs with his discharge, or his body is blocked up by his discharge, it is his uncleanness. (Lev. 15:2–3)
If a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water and be unclean until the evening. (Lev. 15:16)
When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. (Lev. 15:19)
Why are these discharges, all of which are clearly natural, considered unclean in biblical law? In part, these help everyone remember that uncleanness was not a moral issue. Rather, uncleanness was concerned with whether a person was fit to enter sacred space—territory occupied by God’s presence or which had been set aside for God.
We associate being excluded from entering the divine presence with sin, but these discharges are clearly not sin. Scripture never describes them that way. Instead, the unclean status taught the Israelites, and can teach us, important theological truths.
Blood and semen had something in common in the Israelite worldview: they were life fluids. Leviticus 17:11 says, “The life of the flesh is in the blood.” Israelites knew that severe loss of blood meant death. Semen, of course, was where human life came from. Although the Israelites were scientifically and medically primitive by today’s standards, they knew where babies came from.
Blood and semen meant life. Their loss was therefore symbolic of the loss of life. Consequently, forbidding a person who had lost “life force” was a way of reinforcing a simple theological point: God gives life, and his presence means life, not death.
Other biblical laws derive from this rationale. Israelite law held human life as sacred because humans were God’s imagers. Our perspective should be the same.