Numbers 5-6

Up front is making sure the camp is pure with regard to major ritual impurities.

And so chapter 5, verse 1, picks up by saying, "...then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the sons of Israel that they send away from the camp, outside of the camp, everyone with leprosy, everyone having a discharge, and everyone who is unclean because of contact with with a dead person.

These are the three major ritual impurities.

And we talked a lot more about what is meant by ritual impurity, the difference between major and minor ritual impurities.

We talked about all of that in the Leviticus recording.

So if you want to understand that in more detail, I encourage you at some point to listen to our teaching through the book of Leviticus.

But here's the thing.

Minor ritual impurities involved simply washing and then waiting till evening.

But major ones, the three listed here, they entailed separation from the camp and then a sacrifice or when the matter of uncleanness was resolved.

Now, Leviticus didn't always make it clear that in every case you had to go outside of the camp, but that is made explicit here.

You have to remove from the camp, send away from the camp anyone who has leprosy, which refers to serious skin diseases.

Leviticus actually gave a flow chart for how to diagnose this, not just what we call leprosy today.

Anyone who had a discharge, by which they mean an abnormal genital discharge.

Again, Leviticus dealt with that in detail.

And then touch a dead person, such as a family member who died and now needs to be prepared for burial and things like that.

And these kinds of things are just a matter of life.

They just happen.

They aren't sin issues, but they are a matter of ritual purity.

And the reason for that seems to be because these kinds of things are part of the contamination of the fallen world.

The world we live in is not the way it's meant to be.

And so as part of the fallen world, they are part of Israel's covenant with God in that they made a person unfit for worship.

They're matters of worship purity or ritual purity.

So it seems that these kinds of ritual purity requirements really served as living lessons in human fallenness and the brokenness of the world that keep people separate from God and from his people.

So, just as Israel made a distinction between pure and impure foods in order to set them apart from the nations around them, they also made a distinction between ritually pure and ritually impure people when it came to matters of worship.

That's what's being addressed here, and this actually served to teach them and form them in recognizing that the world is not all it was meant to be.