Thoughts on Leviticus 24 & Mark 5

Today’s reading: Leviticus 24; Mark 5

My thoughts on today's passages are not related to one another, but our reading recently in Leviticus is what is drawing my attention in Mark 5.

Thoughts on Leviticus 24

I wonder if the reason the episode of the blasphemy of Shelomith’s son is included here is foreshadowing the spiritual state of Dan.

On the one hand, the account serves as a warning to the tribes that Yahweh is sacred; He is their God and He is not to be blasphemed, even in the heat of anger, or the consequence is death.

But, on the other hand, what is notable about this is the difference between this and the account of the man who is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath in Numbers. That man is also stoned for violating the Sabbath, but nothing is said about who he is or where he is from. In this episode, we are not told the man’s name, but we are told he is from Dan, and we are also told that his father is an Egyptian. That makes me wonder if the reason for the inclusion here is to highlight the already degraded/degrading spiritual state of Dan.

Dan is the tribe that we later see in the book of Judges on their way to claim land for their inheritance, and on the way they take a priest, an ephod, and household gods from the house of Micah to use as their own. So before they have even settled into their territory, they are already breaking away from the tabernacle system and establishing their own priesthood with their own idols…

Dan is then one of the 10 northern tribes that are initially carried off into exile for their idolatry, and when we get to Revelation chapter 7, where John is describing seeing 12,000 people being sealed from each of the tribes of Israel, Dan is conspicuously missing from the list, and a lot of scholars have long believed that it is their consistent idolatry, starting back even before they were settled in the land, that is the reason they are not included in the list in Revelation.

All that to say, it makes me wonder if that is the reason for the specific inclusion of the man’s being from the tribe of Dan and his father being an Egyptian, to show that even during the wilderness wandering, Dan was already spiritually compromised through intermarriage with other nations (which God forbids because it will lead the people to follow the gods of the nations they marry into). So it is already with a spiritually fractured foundation that Dan enters the land, picks up their own priest and idols, and runs fully off the rails away from the proper worship Yahweh right from the outset.

Thoughts on Mark 5

There is a lot happening in Mark 5, but the piece that stood out to me this morning, specifically because of what we have been reading in Leviticus lately, is the woman suffering from a flow of blood.

We have read recently in Leviticus how that flow of blood would make her ritually unclean, and therefore exclude her from any temple worship, but more than just impacting her, it would have very likely isolated her from other people. Anyone she touched, or who touched her, would be made unclean. Anyone who sat on, or even touched, anything she sat or laid on would be made unclean. So given her state of being perpetually unclean, she was also probably very lonely.

Plus, and this is admittedly speculation on my part, I’m betting there is a decent chance she was divorced for this medical issue. I say this because you didn’t not get married back then. There were Roman laws prohibiting you from remaining single too long unless there was a specific reason for you to not be married, so it is reasonable to assume that she would have gotten married like everyone else. But in Jewish understanding, one grounds for divorce was if one spouse was not keeping up their end of the bargain sexually, but sex with a woman during her period was expressly forbidden. So if this consistent bleeding had been going on for 12 years, she would not have been able to have sex with her husband, and it would have been globally accepted as proper grounds for divorce (there were two camps on divorce among the Jews in Jesus’ day, but both camps would have agreed on this as proper grounds).

So if I’m right, this woman has been increasingly isolated from friends and family, potentially even divorced, and completely cut off from access to Yahweh through the temple services for over a decade now…

That also means that when she pushes through the crowd to touch Jesus, she does so knowing that every person she pushes past is now ritually unclean (though they don’t know it, so it may very well result in defiling the temple later). It also means that the man she is secretively tying to touch will be defiled as well, but she is desperate enough she doesn't care.

But this is the amazing thing about Jesus; He is the unique one, not only unable to be defiled, but able to make others clean.

Uncleanness was "contagious" in that it could be picked up from unclean people or things, but cleanness and holiness were not contagious (this is expressly drawn out in Haggai 2). Jesus is the lone exception to this. He is the one who can touch a leper and, instead of being defiled Himself, the leper is made clean. He not only heals the physical, but he makes right the spiritual, removing all defilement. He is the source of holiness, righteousness, and life, and we regularly, throughout the gospel accounts, see Him restoring all three, making clean the unclean, forgiving sin, and restoring life.

Here, with this woman, He didn't just heal her physically, and He also didn't just make her clean, He restored her life. All the loneliness and isolation of the past 12 years has been wiped away. She is restored into community, she can be restored to her family, she can get married, all of her life, which has been stripped away by her uncleanness for the last 12 years, is restored in an instant.

In her desperation, this woman sought out Jesus for relief, and what she found was a complete transformation of her life. And isn't that the same for us? How many people turn to Jesus when they have no where left to turn, looking for a quick fix, looking for relief, and what they find is the giver of life, waiting with open arms, welcoming them into a fullness of healing and life well beyond anything they were asking for.

We have an incredible savior.