2 Say to the children of Israel, If a woman is with child and gives birth to a male child, she will be unclean for seven days, as when she is unwell.
And if a woman has a flow of blood from her body, she will have to be kept separate for seven days, and anyone touching her will be unclean till evening.
And God gave them his blessing and said to them, Be fertile and have increase, and make the earth full and be masters of it; be rulers over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing moving on the earth.
And when the necessary days for making them clean by the law of Moses had come to an end, they took him to Jerusalem to give him to the Lord
To the woman he said, Great will be your pain in childbirth; in sorrow will your children come to birth; still your desire will be for your husband, but he will be your master.
What is man, that he may be clean? and how may the son of woman be upright?
How then is it possible for man to be upright before God? or how may he be clean who is a son of woman?
For this reason, as through one man sin came into the world, and death because of sin, and so death came to all men, because all have done evil: Because, till the law came, sin was in existence, but sin is not put to the account of anyone when there is no law to be broken. But still death had power from Adam till Moses, even over those who had not done wrong like Adam, who is a picture of him who was to come. But the free giving of God is not like the wrongdoing of man. For if, by the wrongdoing of one man death came to numbers of men, much more did the grace of God, and the free giving by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, come to men. And the free giving has not the same effect as the sin of one: for the effect of one man's sin was punishment by the decision of God, but the free giving had power to give righteousness to wrongdoers in great number. For, if by the wrongdoing of one, death was ruling through the one, much more will those to whom has come the wealth of grace and the giving of righteousness, be ruling in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then, as the effect of one act of wrongdoing was that punishment came on all men, even so the effect of one act of righteousness was righteousness of life for all men. Because, as numbers of men became sinners through the wrongdoing of one man, even so will great numbers get righteousness through the keeping of the word of God by one man.
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Commentary on Leviticus 12 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 12
Le 12:1-8. Woman's Uncleanness by Childbirth.
2. If a woman, &c.—The mother of a boy was ceremonially unclean for a week, at the end of which the child was circumcised (Ge 17:12; Ro 4:11-13); the mother of a girl for two weeks (Le 12:5)—a stigma on the sex (1Ti 2:14, 15) for sin, which was removed by Christ; everyone who came near her during that time contracted a similar defilement. After these periods, visitors might approach her though she was still excluded from the public ordinances of religion [Le 12:4].
6-8. the days of her purifying—Though the occasion was of a festive character, yet the sacrifices appointed were not a peace offering, but a burnt offering and sin offering, in order to impress the mind of the parent with recollections of the origin of sin, and that the child inherited a fallen and sinful nature. The offerings were to be presented the day after the period of her separation had ended—that is, forty-first for a boy, eighty-first for a girl.
8. bring two turtles, &c.—(See on Le 5:6). This was the offering made by Mary, the mother of Jesus, and it affords an incontestable proof of the poor and humble condition of the family (Lu 2:22-24).