Leviticus 12

I can't say I've had a lot of personal experience with the conditions mentioned in this chapter, nor will I ever experience them myself. In an age when gender is becoming more fluid, childbearing is still one aspect that indubitably separates a biological woman from a biological man. Discussions about the difference between the sexes can be tricky and controversial, but I think we can all agree that in some areas, such as wages, career opportunities, and civil rights, men and women should be on equal footing.  And while we've made progress, one doesn't have to look beyond the government, Hollywood, or STEM fields, or most workplaces and schools to see just how far we still have to go.

With that in mind, it's a little unsettling, but not surprising, to see that women are unclean for two weeks after bearing a daughter (verse 5) but are unclean for only seven days after bearing a son (verse 2). Even the NIV Study Bible admits ignorance regarding the reason behind this disparity. There's no clear biological reason, as far as we know, so it has to be either a cultural reason or a spiritual reason. God hasn't divulged His explanation, which can only lead us to speculate on a cultural reason. However, I'm no expert on ancient Israelites, so I'll refrain from spewing harebrained theories out of my you-know-what.

Women do have to make a sin offering in addition to a burnt offering after childbirth (verse 6), but lest you think God is condemning the act of childbirth itself, verse 7 explains that the flow of blood makes the woman unclean, not the birth itself. God, of course, knew that blood transmitted all sorts of unsavory little diseases long before any human did, so it does make scientific sense that a woman who had given birth would be unclean. However, I don't think there's any evidence that giving birth to a daughter generates more blood than giving birth to a son.

And that's about all I can write about without venturing into mysterious realms with which I will never be intimately familiar. I guess the one lesson we can definitively take away from this chapter is that blood can be insidious--and not just because of its red color. (As a kid, though, I liked the color red. Red and black were also my high school's colors, much cooler than our rival school's rather wimpy white and green. A childish thought, I know, but what other word would you use to describe homecoming week, rallies, and school spirit events? And in any case, the rival school's colors were the least of its problems.) It's amazing to contemplate that the fluid of life, with all its essential and protective corpuscles, can also be so virulent to others.