Cultural Sexuality
“Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ‘When any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge is unclean.” Leviticus 15:2 NASB
Discharge – You probably will never hear a sermon preached on Leviticus 15. If you read the chapter, you will understand why. It deals with the impurity caused by a “flow” from the penis or vagina. Sometimes this flow (Hebrew zôb) is from normal bodily functions like ejaculation or menstruation. Sometimes it is about abnormal discharges from sexual organs. While the text deals mostly with abnormal discharges, in both cases, impurity attaches. “By classifying illness and disease as forms of impurity, the Israelite priesthood placed them in the realm of religious concern.”[1]
Before we deal with the actual text, we must ask some important questions. First, why did God have to tell Moses about seminal emissions, menstruation, and diseases of the penis and vagina? Was this really of divine concern? And second, what cultural perspective is involved in these instructions? In other words, why are women subject to different cleansing processes than men?
The answer to the first question seems to be related to the Hebrew idea of the sacred. “. . . . All that was associated with the sexual organs was a matter of religious concern in ancient Israel.”[2] Levine adds the important qualification, “In stark contrast, it must be remembered that in all other ancient Near Eastern religions everything that pertained to sexuality had a role in cult and ritual.”[3] Sex does not play a part in sacred worship in Israel. It is, obviously, an important element in Hebrew society, but it does not find its way into religious practice. This sets Israel apart from all of its neighbors, and, in particular, from its Egyptian sojourn. It also means that God is not a sexual being. Perhaps God has to specifically instruct Israel about the normal and abnormal flow from the penis and vagina because if He does not, the cultural environment will treat these occurrences as intimations of the divine. We need only recall that the creation of Man in Egyptian religion was the direct result of the god’s ejaculation to realize how much sexuality influenced religious thinking. Israel’s God removes all that. Sexual organs are important, but they are not divine.
Then we come to the distinction between the cleansing processes. Here Levine’s remark is critical. “Pollution . . . is not a product of the moral system, nor is morality based on pollution. The intersection between the two is, rather, a function of the fact that both are cultural products, shaped by the structure and values of the societies from which they emerge. . . where access to a culture is mediated through male-controlled discourse, as generally seems to be the case in the Hebrew Bible, the pollution beliefs . . . reflect that perspective. To the extent that disgust protects the self from contamination by the other, a male perspective, which naturally regards females as ‘other,’ may also regard them as more disgusting and contaminating than males, leading to a fear of female sexuality and a heightened aversion to female emissions.”[4]
What this means is that the male orientation of Israel explains the more stringent cleansing requirements for females. This is a cultural byproduct.
You may ask, “Why do we even care about such matters?” The reason we care is because we have questions about God and sex. For example, if you Google “Bible verses about menstruation,” you will find questions like these: “Can I go to church during periods?” and “Can a woman fast during her period?” and “Is sexual intercourse permitted during menstruation?” When we realize that “these Provisions were essentially hygiene rules imposed by the social and cultural circumstances of that time and were invested with religious authority”[5] we understand that cultural values play a significant part in these ancient texts but may not be relevant to the culture today. Perhaps we should take a closer look at Camille Paglia’s notion that the mystery of female sexuality forced males to attempt to restrict this unexplainable power.
Topical Index: discharge, zôb, impurity, Leviticus 15:2
[1] Baruch Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus, p. 92.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 36.
