Ceremonially unclean for seven days (12:2). Throughout history, many cultures all over the world have treated genital discharges, including those involved in menstruation and childbirth, as causing ritual impurity (see comments on Lev. 15).111 For example, a Hittite birth ritual text requires a sacrifice on the seventh day after birth and says that a male infant is pure by the age of three months, but a female is pure at four months.112 As in Leviticus 12, there is a weeklong initial period of impurity, and purification of a girl takes longer (cf. vv. 4–5).113 However, whereas the Hittite process has to do with the baby’s impurity, Leviticus is concerned with that of the mother. Also, the Hittite sacrifice is offered at the end of the first week, but Israelite sacrifices come after the entire period of purification.
The fact that concepts of impurity connected with human reproduction are so widespread indicates that their origin “must reside in some universal human condition that has evoked the same response all over the globe.”114 For the Israelites, this condition had to do with “the birth–death cycle that comprises mortality.”115 Because the God of Israel is immortal (Deut. 5:26), he required Israelites to keep their physical ritual impurities, which emphasized their mortality, separate from his sacred domain.