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

We've been in the wilderness with the Israelites for a little over a year and so far

we've made a covenant, established the laws of that covenant, built a tabernacle, arranged

an encampment around that tabernacle, and assigned roles to the Levites in the

surface of the tabernacle. Today God addressed the rest of the tribes as well, making

sure they were living the set apart lives of purity and holiness that he called them to when he entered into his covenant with them.

Today when he's dealing with impurity, God starts with the most obvious kind, external impurity.

He orders them to put the people with

skin diseases outside of the camp, along with anyone who's come in contact with a

dead body. As a reminder, this doesn't mean they're kicked out of his people or

that they're homeless.

They just have to be quarantined so they don't defile the tabernacle.

Next God moves on to addressing internal impurity.

Sins committed against God or others.

God calls for confession and repentance,

as well as legal restitution according to the laws he gave Moses.

If the person someone was supposed to pay back

was dead or had no family, the restitution went to the priest.

Then we hit a really challenging part of this section and it's challenging for a few reasons.

The section on adultery or suspected adultery is ultimately a call for marital purity.

If anyone defiles that male or female, the penalty was death in their society, according to Deuteronomy 22.

But what we encountered today was a different thing.

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