Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

God is the only person who has spoken in Leviticus so far.

And today we continue in the laws for sin offerings.

Tomorrow we'll get a bit of a break from sacrificial instructions and we'll hear from some humans, but for now all of these words are God's words.

One of the things you may have noticed today was the distinction between when the Israelites committed a sin versus when they did something that made them unclean.

Being unclean isn't a sin, so it doesn't require an offering.

It just requires that they be purified.

They don't have to bring a sacrifice, they just have to take a bath or spend some time away from others.

We still do things like this today, quarantining people if they have something we might catch.

We tell people to stay home from work if they're contagious.

Again, this is not talking about

sin, it's talking about uncleanness and it's almost always related to something

hygienic. Some of these hygiene regulations make sense and are especially helpful

in a culture that predated modern science.

For instance, not touching dead bodies, that's probably a good idea.

Or not eating meat after a certain period of time has passed because the fridge space available in the wilderness of

Sinai was probably pretty limited. Not all the cleanliness laws are

straightforward and scientifically logical like that, but some are. For instance, you may

notice that sometimes the cleanliness laws relate to blood.

While this may be hygienic, it's also probably more symbolic.

Blood can be a confusing symbol in the Old Testament especially.

It symbolizes life and

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