“And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled.”
Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. After the initial seven-day impurity, the mother observes a thirty-three day period of secondary purification: she is not ritually impure in the full sense but is restricted from touching sacred things or entering the sanctuary. The thirty-three days of secondary purification create a total of forty days from the birth to full restoration of sanctuary access. The forty-day total mirrors other significant forty-day periods in Scripture: Moses on the mountain, Jesus in the wilderness.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
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