If there’s one thing I’ve pulled away from Leviticus, it’s that the Old Law has a lot of ways that you could be considered ritually unclean. Touching dead bodies and unclean animals (Leviticus 11), childbirth (Leviticus 12), and leprosy (Leviticus 13), to name a few.
Leviticus 15 adds “bodily discharges” to the list. It should be repeated though, that none of these discharges are a result of sin—it purely has to do with making someone ritually impure. These regulations highlight the distinction between moral failings and states of ritual purity. While bodily discharges might render someone ceremonially impure, they do not carry the weight of sin in the same way as other transgressions. Ultimately, the purification rituals provide a pathway back to wholeness, allowing the faithful to approach the presence of God, symbolized by the blood on the mercy seat. These regulations highlight the distinction between moral impurity and ritual purity, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a state of being suitable for worship. The priests played a crucial role in ensuring that individuals understood the value of sin offering blood, which symbolically cleansed them from their transgressions. Ultimately, the focus was on restoring individuals to a position where they could participate fully in communal worship and maintain a right relationship with God. These regulations reflect the uniqueness of Israel’s sexual ethics, which emphasizes the importance of ritual purity in maintaining community holiness. Understanding these guidelines provides insight into how ancient Israelite society navigated issues of bodily integrity and social boundaries. Ultimately, these laws served to distinguish Israel from surrounding cultures and reinforce a collective identity rooted in divine instruction.
That being said, being “impure” can have a huge impact on your life. Lepers were social outcasts, and someone that had a urinary tract infection was impure for a week. These weren’t mini-vacations—they were a full upheaval of your daily life.
Women, in particular, had a rough go of it. Even though they weren’t sent to live in isolation, a woman in her “menstrual impurity” was considered unclean for seven whole days. She had to watch where she sat, where she slept, and especially, who she came into contact with.
Imagine though, not just keeping that up for seven days, but twelve full years. That’s the reality for the woman with the bleeding issue in Matthew 9:20-23 (and Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 8:43-48).
I’ll admit that I’ve read this passage hundreds of times and never once thought to stop and think of the implications of her story. As a man, I have no idea what it’s like to deal with her specific problem, much less for twelve full years. When you consider that she was impure that whole time (unable to worship with her fellow Jews, at the very least) it must’ve been a taxing experience, to put it mildly.
To me, that at least partially explains her desperation in her New Testament story. Despite the hoard of people crushing in on Jesus, we see her single-minded determination as she pushes through the crowd, saying “If I only touch His garment I will get well.”
There’s zero doubt she had the faith that Jesus could cure her. But there’s also two other immutable facts: She was out of options (no one else had successfully healed her), and she was breaking a Levitical law by her actions. According to Leviticus 15:27, if she touched Jesus, she would make Him ritually impure.
Can you imagine the scandal? A woman with a bleeding issue intentionally touches the most famous Teacher in Galilee, and knocks Him out of commission for an entire day. All those people who were waiting in line would be livid at her for selfishly cutting to the front and taking all the healing for herself.
But this is where you see the intersection of desperation and faith. If you want something bad enough—in this case, to be healed of a debilitating illness—you’ll believe the impossible. You’ll even do the unthinkable if it means being free.
Honestly, as much as I wish she had simply been more patient, there is a lesson to be learned here for all of us. Until our faith reaches the desperation point, where we’re willing to give up everything to be close to Jesus, we’ll always of be in a semi-state of limbo. Too content to beg for Jesus, but too sick to be a fully-devoted follower.
In a way, I pray that we all would have this kind of faith. To want that healing from Jesus so desperately that we’re willing to disregard everything we know in order to obtain it. That’s a desperate faith, indeed.
