When a man has sexual relations with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both of them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. The impurity of sexual intercourse: both participants bathe and are unclean until evening. The brief, self-resolving impurity of sexual intercourse within marriage (implied by the ordinary context of the verse) communicates that marital sexual relations are not sinful but do create a temporary ritual impurity requiring the standard purification before sanctuary access is resumed. Hebrews 13:4 says marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure — the physical purity that the bathing requirement maintains is the ritual correlate of the moral purity Hebrews calls for.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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