Leviticus 5:2, 3 Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcass of an unclean beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle… We naturally ask, Why such stringent regulations as to everything of man or beast that was "unclean"? We may understand - I. THE EXPLANATION (THE RATIONALE) OF THESE REQUIREMENTS. 1. The two main truths God was teaching his people were the divine unity, and purity of heart and life. The state of surrounding heathendom made these two lessons emphatically and particularly necessary. 2. God's method of teaching was pictorial: it was by rite, symbol, illustration. The world was in its religious childhood. 3. Under this method bodily ills naturally stood for spiritual evils; as wholeness of the body stood for health of the soul, so the sickness of the body answered to the malady of the soul, and the uncleanness of the one to the impurity of the other. 4. Hence would result the fact that the careful avoidance of the one would be an instructive lesson in the shunning of the other. Associating the two things so closely in their minds, commanded to shun most scrupulously all bodily uncleanness, taught to look at the least defilement as a transgression of the law, they would necessarily feel, with all desirable intensity, that every moral and spiritual impurity must be most sensitively avoided. Therefore such enactments as those of the text. II. THEIR MORAL SIGNIFICANCE. They say to us: 1. That we should avoid all that is suggestive of impurity.. 2. That we should shun everything which can, in any way or in the least degree, be communicative of spiritual evil. 3. That a stain upon the soul may be contracted without our own knowledge; "if it be hidden from him." This may be through books, friends, habits of speech. 4. That we should point out to the unwary their danger or their error. 5. That on the first intimation of error we should penitently return on our way. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him; he also shall be unclean, and guilty. |
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