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

Today we finished finished our 22nd book of the Bible. I know that's only a third of the way

through the number of books in the Bible. There are 66. But as far as word count is

concerned, we're well over halfway through our trip through

scripture together.

Okay, let's wrap up Isaiah.

In chapter 64, we encounter a section that I've misunderstood for most of my life.

It's in verse six and it says,

we have all become like one who is unclean

and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

For years I thought this meant that all my God honoring works

were still tainted by my flesh and displeasing to him. By the way that phrase

polluted garment is actually the Hebrew phrase used in ancient times to refer to a woman's

menstrual rag.

So that's a pretty intense comparison if that's what all our righteous deeds are like.

That's not just humbling, that's actually demotivating. But that's exactly

why context and culture are important to remember, because they help us understand something

in this verse that might not be immediately obvious.

In ancient Israel, people who are unclean,

like this first mentions, couldn't enter the temple

without first being purified.

And when women were having their period, they weren't allowed in the temple either.

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