Leviticus 13

Leviticus 13:40

"Now if a man loses the hair of his head, he is bald; he is clean.

Okay, I'll admit, I chose this specifically for humor.  You're discussing leprosy, a set of serious skin infections (at the time, our definition's strayed a bit), and you're discussing this?  A guy goes bald, and  you have to check whether that makes him unclean or not?  If it did, then we're got a lot of unclean people in this world, and I'm sure the Jews had many in their camp at the time who breathed a sigh of relief.

I understand the significance of cleanliness in a camp like this, but the fact that you have to check about a normal biological function seems a bit strange to me.  Makes me wonder if there was some ostracism or denigration of bald men at the time.

Leviticus 12

Leviticus 12:5

But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days.

Okay, I'm not big on the whole women's rights movement, but I've got to ask here:  what's the deal?  Why is a woman unclean for twice as long if she has a daughter than a son?  I know the patriarchy is still alive and well (and with reason) at this time, but why is the woman punished for something she had absolutely no control over?  She didn't have any choice about whether it was a boy or a girl.  So why is she punished?

I'm not even going to try to speculate on this one.  It's just got me confused.

Leviticus 11

Leviticus 11:45

For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.'"

 This is the end of a chapter about what animals are clean and unclean, and really sums up the reason for the book to this point, which has been mostly rules.  There are still plenty of people who think that a lot of these rules were made solely to make things difficult, or because He was on some kind of power trip.  But this verse shows that's not the case.

God's goal is to make His people holy, and it's my belief that it's so we're worthy of having a relationship with.  God can't associate with those who are unholy, like a healthy person can't be around the sick constantly without becoming sick himself.  So God wants us to be Holy, so that we can be with Him.  He wants that connection, that relationship, with His creation, so that we can return to the connection we had in Eden.

Leviticus 10

Leviticus 10:6

Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that  you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation.  But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the Lord has brought about.

I almost wish this had stopped at the first sentence.  It would have been very easy to make a statement about not being sorry for the suffering of someone who sins.  But the end of this verse means that that is not necessarily the correct meaning.

Apparently, the priests were not to mourn their dead family, because what they had done was a very serious sin, and God had punished it in the only way he really could.  However, the people as a whole were permitted to mourn.  These were still deaths of members of the people, and therefore should be remembered.  But were they mourning the people lost, or was it the sin they had committed that caused them to wail?