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Leviticus 12

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1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,

2 Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, A woman if she have received seed and given·​·birth·​·to a male, then she shall be·​·unclean seven days; according·​·to the days of the isolation of her infirmity shall she be·​·unclean.

3 And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

4 And she shall then dwell in the bloods* of her cleansing three days and thirty days; all that is holy she shall not touch, and into the sanctuary she shall not come, until the days of her cleansing be fulfilled.

5 But if she give·​·birth·​·to a female, then she shall be·​·unclean two·​·weeks, as in her isolation; and sixty days and six days she shall dwell upon the bloods of her cleansing.

6 And when the days of her cleansing are·​·fulfilled, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb, a son of his year, for a burnt·​·offering, and a young dove, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, to the entrance of the Tabernacle of the congregation, to the priest;

7 and he shall offer it before Jehovah, and make· an ·atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood. This is the law for her that has given·​·birth·​·to a male or a female.

8 And if her hand find not enough for a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves, or two young doves; one for a burnt·​·offering, and one for a sin offering; and the priest shall make· an ·atonement for her, and she shall be·​·clean.

   


Thanks to the Kempton Project for the permission to use this New Church translation of the Word.

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.