Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/893

 or ill, is applied here and in Lev 15:33; Lev 20:18, to the suffering connected with an issue of blood.

verses 3-4
After the expiration of this period, on the eighth day, the boy was to be circumcised (see at Gen 17). She was then to sit, i.e., remain at home, thirty-three days in the blood of purification, without touching anything holy or coming to the sanctuary (she was not to take any part, therefore, in the sacrificial meals, the Passover, etc.), until the days of her purification were full, i.e., had expired.

Verse 5
But if she had given birth to a girl, she was to be unclean two weeks (14 days), as in her menstruation, and then after that to remain at home 66 days. The distinction between the seven (or fourteen) days of the “separation for her infirmity,” and the thirty-three (or sixty-six) days of the “blood of her purifying,” had a natural ground in the bodily secretions connected with child-birth, which are stronger and have more blood in them in the first week (lochia rubra) than the more watery discharge of the lochia alba, which may last as much as five weeks, so that the normal state may not be restored till about six weeks after the birth of the child. The prolongation of the period, in connection with the birth of a girl, was also founded upon the notion, which was very common in antiquity, that the bleeding and watery discharge continued longer after the birth of a girl than after that of a boy (Hippocr. Opp. ed. Kühn. i. p. 393; Aristot. h. an. 6, 22; 7, 3, cf. Burdach, Physiologie iii. p. 34). But the extension of the period to 40 and 80 days can only be accounted for from the significance of the numbers, which we meet with repeatedly, more especially the number forty (see at Exo 24:18).

verses 6-8
After the expiration of the days of her purification “with regard to a son or a daughter,” i.e., according as she had given birth to a son or a daughter (not for the son or daughter, for the woman needed purification for herself, and not for the child to which she had given birth, and it was the woman, not the child, that was unclean), she was to bring to the priest a yearling lamb for a burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or turtle-dove for a sin-offering, that he might make atonement for her before Jehovah and she might become clean from the course of her issue. שׁנתו בּן, lit., son of his year, which is a year old (cf. Lev 23:12; Num 6:12, Num 6:14; Num 7:15, Num 7:21, etc.), is used interchangeably with שׁנה בּן (Exo 12:5), and with שׁנה בּני in the plural (Lev 23:18-19; Exo 29:38; Num 7:17,