Hope Awakening: The Purification Offering
“When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,’ and to offer the sacrifice of ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,’ in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.”
Luke 2:22-24
How many of you grumble when it’s time to read a passage from Leviticus? It’s a tough book to read! I remember once committing to reading the entire Bible in a year and when I got to Leviticus, I gave up. The rituals for the various offerings are hard to follow because they no longer apply to us under the New Covenant. Praise God that Jesus’ blood shed on the Cross covers all our transgressions! Leviticus was a very important book for the Israelites and the original readers of today’s text would have understood the significance of what Luke conveyed.
In these days, not everyone would be able to participate in temple services, offerings, and festivals. The law required men and women to be clean. There are a number of things that could cause one to become unclean, some being out of a person’s control. For a Jewish woman, childbirth led to uncleanness. The Lord informed the people through Moses: “When a woman has a child, giving birth to a boy, she shall be unclean for seven days, with the same uncleanness as her menstrual period. On the eighth day, the flesh of the boy’s foreskin shall be circumcised, and then she shall spend thirty-three more days in a state of blood purity: she shall not touch anything sacred nor enter the sanctuary till the days of her purification are fulfilled” (Leviticus 12:2-4). A woman giving birth to a girl would have to spend eighty days being purified!
After the purification period ended, the parents were then required to “bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a yearling lamb for burnt offering and a pigeon or a turtledove for a purification offering” (Leviticus 12:6). This burnt offering atoned for the woman’s uncleanness and officially declared her clean. Doesn’t that seem wild to you? There is a whole process for a woman to follow just to be allowed back in the temple following childbirth!
Further, the Lord mandated that if a woman couldn’t afford a lamb, “she may take two turtledoves or two pigeons” as the offering to present to the priest (Leviticus 12:8). Luke tells us (without telling us) that Joseph and Mary were a poor couple. Jesus wasn’t born to wealthy, important Jewish people. He was born to an ordinary, poor young woman married to a poor carpenter. From the right hand of God in heaven to the most humble life here on earth, Jesus modeled humility to us just as his parents modeled humility to him.
God commanded the Israelites to “consecrate to [Him] every firstborn; whatever opens the womb among the Israelites, whether of human being or beast” (Exodus 13:2). All Jewish women were required to formally dedicate their firstborn son to God. The dedication served as a reminder of what the Lord had done when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God required the Israelites to place blood on their doorposts in order to protect their families from His act of killing all the firstborn males of the Egyptians. Exodus 13:16 tells us this dedication “will be like a sign on your hand and a band on your forehead that with a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.”
Through Luke, we learn that Mary and Joseph continue to be obedient to God and all He commanded His people. They are an ordinary, humble couple who loves the Lord. They follow the purification laws for the child who will one day be the purification for us all. They dedicate the child who pre-existed creation and would forever break the chains of our bondage to sin. They knew their child was God’s only Son, and yet they didn’t treat him any different than they would another child. An ordinary couple raising an extraordinary child, the Messiah.
All praise and glory be to God, forever and ever!
Reflection: Read Leviticus 4, which is a discussion on the sin offerings required under the law. Israelites throughout all generations would follow these rules! Praise God for His plan to send Jesus to be our once and for all atonement. Leviticus can be tough to read, but I am so grateful to live under the New Covenant. Understanding what Israelites had to do helps me to appreciate all the more the work of the Cross.