Leviticus 12:0 - Exposition

As there is a natural disgust felt for some kinds of food, which serves as a foundation for the precepts of the last chapter, so there is an instinct which regards some of the concomitants of childbirth, and some diseases, as foul and defiling. In accordance with these instincts, purifying rites are commanded for the restoration of those affected to ceremonial cleanness. These instincts and consequent regulations respecting women in childbirth are found in very many different nations. "The Hindoo law pronounced the mother of a newborn child to be impure for forty days, required the father to bathe as soon as the birth had taken place, and debarred the whole family for a period from religious rites, while they were 'to confine themselves to an inward remembrance of the Deity;' in a Brahmin family this rule extended to all relations within the fourth degree, for ten days, at the end of which they had to bathe. According to the Parsee law, the mother and child were bathed, and the mother had to live in seclusion for forty days, after which she had to undergo other purifying rites. The Arabs are said by Burekhardt to regard the mother as unclean for forty days. The ancient Greeks suffered neither childbirth nor death to take place within consecrated places; both mother and child were bathed, and the mother was not allowed to approach an altar for forty days. The term of forty days, it is evident, was generally regarded as a critical one for both the mother and the child. The day on which the Romans gave the name to the child—the eighth day for a girl, and the ninth for a boy—was called lustrieus dies, 'the day of purification,' because certain lustral rites in behalf of the child were performed on the occasion, and some sort of offering was made. The amphidromia of the Greeks was a similar lustration for the child, when the name was given, probably between the seventh and tenth days" (Clark).