When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean. The cleansing period after the unusual discharge resolves: seven days of counting, cloth-washing, and bathing in fresh water. The seven-day counting period mirrors the seven-day isolation of ambiguous skin disease presentations. The cloth-washing and fresh-water bathing at the end of the seven days produces the clean status. The self-resolving character of the discharge impurity (once the discharge ends, the seven-day count begins) communicates the temporary nature of this category of impurity.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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