Clean and Unclean: A Lost Emphasis
by Ed Nelson
Part Two: Coming to Terms with the Bible
In Part One, the subject of “clean and unclean” was introduced as a thoroughly biblical issue fundamental to the faith walk in both Old and New Testaments. In Part Two, we explore the human experience found in these Hebraic concepts.
To be clean or pure (tahor). The main Hebrew word for “clean” is tahor. Sometimes it is translated into English as “pure,” or “sanctified.” To be “clean” is to be pure before God. The word intends to express the desire of wholeness, worthiness and excellence in one’s life, a state of existence that makes one worthy to appear before God.
In ourselves we are never worthy of such divine honor. Instead, our sin nature and natural uncleanness remind us that we are never worthy to be in God’s Presence on our own without the atoning work of God. This, in a nutshell, explains the significance of the sacrificial system expressed in the Book of Leviticus (Vayikra) and, later in Jewish history, the atonement for sins expressed through faith in Messiah Jesus [Yeshua].
A similar and related word, tahara, means the status of cleanness or purity. A tahor person has received the condition of tahara (cleanness, purity).
To be unclean or impure (tamei). Someone or something “unclean” is tamei. A similar word, tumah, means the condition of uncleanness or impurity.
In the Bible, an evil spirit is often called a tamei spirit, i.e., an unclean spirit. A person under the influence of an unclean spirit is unclean (tamei). Jesus of Nazareth cast out tamei spirits who demonized the minds of many. He sought to transform the victims’ spiritual condition from their unclean condition of being tamei to tahara (i.e., cleanness) so they may appear in God’s Temple or the synagogue having been made clean (tahor).
The Messiah also healed people of “unclean” (tamei) diseases. Again, his objective was to make them clean (tahor) and whole (shalom) by healing the person of the disease. Deliverance and healing helped qualify the freed and healed to appear in the Presence of God as clean people in his sight.
Uncleanness as a contagion. To be unclean, all you had to do was be in contact with an unclean animal, thing or person. Proximity by touching made you unclean. You caught uncleanness by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Uncleanness was so contagious that it was transferred to you. When you became contaminated even in all innocence you shared in its guilt (cf. Leviticus 5:2-3):
If a person touches any unclean thing, whether a carcass of an
unclean beast or the carcass of unclean cattle or a carcass of
unclean swarming things, though it is hidden from him and he
is unclean, then he will be guilty.
Or if he touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort his
uncleanness may be with which he becomes unclean, and it is
hidden from him, and then he comes to know it, he will be guilty.
To disregard the implied transmittal properties of uncleanness, we must dismiss arguments and statements, not only of the Lord Jesus [cf. Matthew 8:3; 23:25; Mark 1:41; Luke 5:13], but also of New Testament writers like the apostles Paul, James and John. [cf. Romans 1:24; 6:19; 14:14; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 5:26;1 Thessalonians 4:7; James 4:8; 1 John 1:7, 9; Revelation 18:2].
The power represented behind the word tamei (“unclean”) is that of an unholy contagion. If you touch someone or something tamei you are no longer innocent of it. Like a viral strain of flu, you catch it. You are not immune. You, too, become tamei by exposure and touch.
In ancient Israel, a person suffering from a skin disease like leprosy was quarantined. If you approached, the leper was obligated to shout, “tamei! tamei! Unclean! Unclean!” [cf. Leviticus 13:45] A warning filled the air of possible contamination. Even if the disease was not infectious in itself, you became infected by uncleanness simply by touching the diseased person.
What if you inadvertently touched a leper or his clothes? Or what if you intentionally tried to help a leper, or other unclean person? Doctors and nurses were considered unclean by the nature of their vocation. The same was true of hair cutters, or barbers.
Whether you contracted leprosy or not didn’t matter. Just to touch a leper, or a person with a skin disease, or to touch his torn garment or one of his articles was to become tamei. You must suffer the social and spiritual quarantine of the disease until the tamei influence dissipated, like a slow leak in a container of water.
You were declared guilty of its social consequences by virtue of contact, whether physically you became infected or not. Social and spiritual contamination was as real as physical contamination. If you did not contract the disease, you must wait your time apart from the community of faith until your tamei condition lost its influence.
On a broader scale beyond leprosy, to touch any tamei person meant you participate in their condition and share the same guilt for uncleanness (tumah).
Uncleanness and the Tabernacle, or Temple. We get a better understanding of what it means to be unclean, or clean, as we understand that the laws of uncleanness (tumah) are directly related to approachability to the holy things of Yahweh’s revelation. tamei persons were not permitted to participate in any holy activities, including attending synagogue or worshiping on the Temple grounds. They were not permitted to study the Torah either. They were excluded until the tamei status ended.
The first explanatory laws of uncleanness and cleanness are found in Leviticus 5 precisely in the midst of the explanations of holy sacrifices at the Tabernacle, of Tent of Meeting [Mishkan]. The dreadful powers of the unclean to contaminate are greater than the powers of the clean to resist uncleanness. Why is this so? And why should it be so? When the clean touches the unclean, the clean becomes spoiled by contact. There is no apparent law to reverse this polluting effect of uncleanness in Leviticus, or the whole of Torah.
The clean soaks up the unclean. What is the purpose of clean animals to be offered as a sacrifice for guilt and sins? The purpose of the clean was to soak up, or absorb the properties of the unclean. After the clean, by the transmission of contact with the unclean, has become unclean, it is disposable. It is offered up as a sacrifice. Only the clean may be sacrificed for sin after it has become unclean by the laying on of hands (samekh) of the sinner.
Think of the value of paper towels. They are purchased because they are clean and have soaking properties like a sponge. They are absorbents. Once used they become unclean and disposable. Paper towels are not kept once they have served their purpose to absorb the grime, or spill. They have served their usefulness. In a similar way, clean animals kept for sacrifice or sin absorbers. They soak up the unclean and become guilty for the sins of those who lay hands on them. As such, they now are disposable as sacrifices for the guilt and sins of the ones they represent.
Purification rites. When a person’s tamei condition ended by a prescribed period of time, sometimes for one day, other times for seven days, the change of condition to tahor (clean) was signaled by the act of immersion in water in a mikveh (baptismal pool). Water was essential to the process. It was the way back into society, to communal living. Without immersion in water, no ritual cleansing was complete.
Leviticus 14:1-32 shows the purification process for returning from an unclean condition with a skin disease to a clean condition. It consisted of three stages:
1. Stage one was outside the camp.
2. Stage two was inside the camp for a seven day period but outside his tent (i.e., separated from his wife) and away from the Tent of Meeting
3. Stage three was inside the camp in front of the Tent of Meeting.
Outside the camp. Upon recovery outside the camp, he was examined by a priest (kohen) who visited him outside the camp where he was quarantined. If he was healed, the priest (kohen) ordered two clean, live birds to be brought to him. Along with the two clean birds also was brought “some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop” (v. 2).
One of the birds was killed over a clay pot filled with fresh water, or living water. The slaughtered bird’s blood was drained into the water, a mixture of blood and water. Cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop were dipped into the water to make it even redder than the bird’s blood mixed with water. Redder was better.
We see a hint in this procedure at the crucifixion of Messiah Jesus “outside the camp” of Jerusalem (cf. Hebrews 13:12) where blood and water flowed mixed together from his pierced side. In the Gospel of John (19:34) we read an eyewitness account: “One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ [Yeshua’s] side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.”
In the priestly ceremony outside the camp on behalf of the cured man, the live bird was dipped into the reddened mixture of water and blood and was released to the open fields.
Seven times the priest sprinkled the blood mixture over the healed man, each time pronouncing him clean (v. 7).
After the sprinkling of bloody water was done, the man pronounced clean seven times outside the camp then washed his clothes, shaved off all his hair and bathed with water (v. 8) to indicate his cleanness. Then he was allowed in the camp, but not inside his tent to be with his wife and family. Although he was pronounced clean by the priest, he was to spend seven days inside the camp to continue the process of purification to be absolutely sure he was clean.
The biblical text of Leviticus 14:1-7 is written in a literary structure of Hebrew symmetry called a chiasm. A chiasm is a familiar literary style of writing in the Bible. It shows a literary path of corresponding words or thoughts that symmetrically unfold around a double center. By using the alphabet as a way of seeing the structure, it would be written as ABCC¹B¹A¹. A double center as shown below as C and C¹ serves to bounce the main points of emphasis to the outer edges of the chiasm, namely A and A¹.
A The priest (kohen) shall order two clean (tahor), live (chayyoth) birds along with cedar wood, crimson yarn, and hyssop.
B The priest shall order one of the birds to be slaughtered (shachat) in a clay pot over live (chayyim) water.
C He shall take the live (chayyah) bird, along with the cedar wood, the crimson yarn, and the hyssop …
C¹ and dip them together with the live (chayyah) bird …
B¹ in the blood of the slaughtered (shachat) bird over the live chayyim) water.
A¹ He shall then sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed (tahor) of the skin disease and cleanse (tahor) him; and he shall set the live chayyah) bird free in the open field.
The chiastic structure can be very easily discerned through the repeated use of the term chay (“live”) and its related words chayyoth, chayyah and chayyim in reference to both the living water and the live bird.
The outer frame of this segment (A-A¹) mentions the two live birds, one of which the priest ultimately, at the end of the process, sets free “in the open field.” In B, the priest slaughters a bird over “live water,” and in B¹ we learn what the priest does with this blood-stained water (he dips the live bird in it). The center of the process, itself doubled (C-C¹) to push the emphasis to the outer edges of the chiasm (A-A¹), describes the dipping of the live bird with additional elements to make the solution even redder.
Wherein lays the significance of this ritual? As this procedure does not occur anywhere near an altar and nothing is brought as an offering, it clearly does not fit into the framework of typically prescribed sacrifices. Why, then, does the priest slaughter a bird over fresh water, dip a live bird in its blood and then send it away?
It is no mere coincidence that the word chay, or chayyim (“life”), emerges as the most prominent term in this literary unit about being made clean. This ceremony marks the transition from death to life, or the rebirth of the infected, diseased man who seeks reentry into the camp of God.
Two points bear consideration. First, this same purification process appears elsewhere in the Bible as part of the purification process of one who had come in contact with a dead body, who has an itch, or mildew in their home or clothing, for a swelling of the flesh, a rash or a bright spot on the skin (Leviticus 14:54-55).
Second, the cedar wood, crimson yarn and hyssop colors the fresh water red on its own before the bird’s blood is added—the redder the better for the mixture of blood and water in this cleansing process. From this deep redness the live bird bursts forth and flies freely. The color red assumes so prominent a role in this ceremony because it represents the antithesis of the white coloration that had surfaced on the diseased man’s skin that made him unclean. Whitened skin signified the presence of death. Redness relates to blood, or to life, as we know from the Scriptural association: “Blood is life.”
The live bird, which flies away from the red solution, represents the individual returning to the brim of full and abundant life, his rejoining society and life by the lovingkindness of Yahweh.
Because of the Hebrew symmetry, the chiasm, we are able to learn how cleanness and uncleanness are related to life, and that life is in the blood. Cleanness represents one’s fullness of life. Uncleanness designates less than the fullness of life. A life-leak occurs that makes a person unclean. A bleeding, a sore, an injury, a sickness, the menstrual period, the emission of semen, a skin disease that wastes the body of its fingers and toes, a swelling of infection—all these and more drain the body of its fullness of life. Such is the condition of uncleanness—to be less than whole.
At the end of this initial purification ceremony outside the camp, the Scripture in Leviticus 14:8 commands the cured man to turn himself, as it were, into an infant child:
The one to be cleansed shall wash his clothes,
shave off all his hair,
and bathe in water;
then he shall be clean.
After that he may enter the camp.
We are familiar with immersion in water as a form of purification, but why must the cured man shave his hair? Apparently, this ritual expresses rebirth, symbolizing a brand new entry into the world and a desire to live. The departure from the immersion waters without a single hair on the body very much brings to mind childbirth. In this context, the man once unclean and now pronounced clean has, indeed, been reborn in the sense of a “dead” person coming back to life.
The ceremony outside the camp is a ceremony of the man’s resurrection from the dead in the sense of coming back to life whereby he is made worthy to enter the community of faith as a new born person—bald and cleansed. Yet the reclamation of the man once having a serious skin disease is not yet complete.
Inside the camp but outside his tent. The healed man went from the outside of the camp to the inside. But inside the camp he resided seven days outside his family tent. He was not yet permitted to enter his home. At the end of the seven days, he shaved his body clean again, the second time in a week. Again, he washed his clothes and bathed himself with water as he had done earlier outside the camp. The ceremony of the two birds was not repeated for life had been restored. Outside the camp he was pronounced clean by a priest. This time after seven days inside the camp with him being clean shaven and cleanly washed he will be clean indeed (v. 9). Worth was ascribed to him again.
Inside the camp in front or the Tent of Meeting. On the eighth day he could enter his tent, i.e., be with his wife and family. But the order of the day was that first he appear before the Tent of Meeting (Mishkan) to bring special offerings, or sacrifices to the priest to offer at the altar. The offerings were of three types: a sin offering, a guilt offering, a burnt offering and a fellowship offering (14:23-32).
Uncleanness is so closely associated with sinfulness, though different in ways we’ve mentioned, that our uncleanness demands a sacrifice of blood to restore us to full life.
Loss of wholeness—“life-leaks”—is tamei. Conditions that make a person tamei (unclean, impure) in the written and oral Torahs of ancient Judaism painted a picture about the inner quality of our lives–what our hearts are like. tumah, the state of uncleanness from which the word tamei is derived, and tahara, the state of cleanness from which the word tahor is derived, are ultimately signs. Though clean and unclean issues concern our external selves, these same issues point to our heart’s condition.
Pharisees were the most astute observers of the written and oral Torahs during the time of our Lord Jesus. Many, not all, missed the truth about the power of tamei and tahor. They saw it as ritual power, something done on the outside to merit purity or to disqualify someone, failing to understand its true internal meaning and implications.
Jesus of Nazareth pointed beyond the ceremonial ritual to the actual intention. “You’re missing the point!” he admonished. “Hear and understand,” He said. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that make a man unclean (tamei).” (cf. Matthew 15:19). Jesus did not say anything that added to the Torah. He simply said what it meant.
The wholeness, wellness or fullness of the heart determines if one is clean (tahor) or unclean (tamei).
Any condition that results in a “life-leak” is tamei. In the physical sense, bleeding, sores, skin disorders, boils, menstrual periods, seminal emissions and so forth are life-leaks. Quality of life is not brimming full. Here is the point. Loss of wholeness prevails in any unclean situation.
Another word to learn in this context is shalom. Usually it is rendered as “peace” in our English translations of the Bible. It’s, of course, used in several contexts, including both the Jewish greeting and farewell – shalom! But the Gentile idea of peace and that intended in Hebrew are different. shalom means to be complete, whole, brimming at peak quality of life—without life-leaks.
To be shalom is to be without tumah, the state of uncleanness and impurity. Rather, it is to be in the state of cleanness and purity (tahara) in all aspects of life before God and the community of faith. Thus, shalom means quality of life represented in being tahor (pure). No one has peace – shalom – who is not tahor (pure).
Shalom! To understand the impact of the greeting of shalom you must understand its objective. It is a succinct expression saying, “May you be tahor in all your ways without any tamei in your life. May you brim with wholeness in full measure of life!”
Read Ephesians 4:13 in this light. The apostle Paul states that the goal of believers is to “be complete in the whole stature of Messiah’s fullness.” Wholeness is life, and that life is found only in Jesus the Messiah.
Obviously not all believers, according to Paul, are complete or whole (shalom). Not to be whole is to be tamei – incomplete, suffering loss of life’s fullness. Believers without wholeness (shalom) are contaminated by the world’s tamei conditions. In another place, the apostle tells his readers to not conform any more to this world, but be transformed by renewing their minds in the Lord Jesus (cf. Romans 12:2).
The apostle sets before us the goal to live in wholeness like Jesus by living in Him. In this way, the Lord fills in our loss of completeness – our loss of shalom due to sin and tamei – by restoring us in his fullness (shalom) through conformity to Him.
In like manner, behind a person’s healing is restoration to wholeness so he may be clean (tahor) before God. For this reason, Jesus said to those He healed, “Be whole!”
For the Nazirite, (cf. Numbers 6:1-21) the mere symbols of “life-leaks” of cutting the hair or drinking fermented drink was enough to cause him to become tamei. A human corpse or animal carcass was tamei because all life had slipped out. To touch a corpse or carcass was considered tumah meit—the contamination of death.
Objects like utensils of the Temple and synagogue may be contaminated by touch or by deteriorating conditions. A slightly cracked or chipped cup in a home rendered the cup tamei. Deterioration of any kind represented death and dying, the condition of contaminated life. Such was the power to make someone or something tamei.
The foreboding implication of being tahor (clean) is that you are always on the defensive. The power of tamei to overcome your purity in the community of faith was a constant threat. Touch something unclean accidentally, or without knowledge – it doesn’t matter. You become tamei. Get sick, hurt, lose a social status or lose a family member to death – though beyond your control, you become tamei. You are always in danger of losing your state of sanctity.
A tahor person or thing that touches or is touched by a tamei person or thing cannot resist the power of becoming tamei. When tahor meets tamei, tahor loses. How fragile life is.
The limits of prophets and priests. Only under rare circumstances can something tamei become tahor by command or touch. For sure, no human may touch a lame, blind, deaf, leprous, bleeding or dead person without becoming unclean before God. The power of tamei to contaminate is dominant.
The best of Israel’s priests and prophets were impotent to change the status of someone or something tamei to a pure tahor state by their touch.
When Naaman, the Syrian commander with leprosy, came to the prophet Elisha’s home, the army chief expected the prophet to come near him and wave his hand over the leprous spot. Instead, Elisha guarded himself from exposure and sent a messenger out to Naaman with instructions to wash seven times in the Jordan. Elisha remained at a distance to keep his sanctity. Naaman obeyed and was healed, but not by the prophet’s touch or command to be healed. After the healing occurred apart from the presence of the prophet, Elisha ventured out to meet the now tahor Syrian commander (cf. 2 Kings 5:11-15).
The best a prophet could do was to instruct a tamei person from a healthy distance lest he too become contaminated.
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