| Leviticus 12:5
| But if she shall bear a maid-child, she shall be unclean two weeks, according to the custom of her monthly courses, and she shall remain in the blood of her purification sixty-six days.
| Days. In all 80, double the time required for a male child, as they infirmities of women continue so much longer when they bear a female. (Vales. sac. Philos. c. xviii.) Hippocrates allows forty-two days for the one, and thirty for the other. --- Purification. Some copies of the Septuagint read, in her pure, others, in her impure blood; which Origen attempts to reconcile by observing, that she is deemed less impure during the last thirty-three or sixty-six days, than in the preceding ones. (Calmet) --- During these, she was treated almost like those who were under the greatest legal uncleanness, Leviticus 15.; Numbers 5. Those who were under the less, might enter the court of the Gentiles, and did not infect others by their touch. (Josephus, contra Apion 2.) (Tirinus)
|