Final Summary (Leviticus 15:31-33).
“Thus shall you separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in the midst of them.”
The purpose of these laws was in order to continually separate the people of Israel from their uncleanness. God wanted them to be as wholly clean as possible, given the limitations. They were also in order to prevent Israel defiling the tabernacle by anyone from the High Priest downwards entering its court in a ritually unclean state. Limited uncleanness was allowed in the holy camp, but not in the holy sanctuary precincts, for the sanctuary was of a superior holiness. This would result in the people regulating their lives in such a way that this was prevented. The whole camp would regulate matters so that men and women could avoid uncleanness as far as possible.
This would ‘incidentally' prevent much spreading of disease, and ensure the respectful treatment of women at difficult times. It made men and women constantly in mind of the fall, and of their own sinfulness, and in mind that death, which the pouring out of blood pointed to, was ever at hand. But the possibility of restoration to cleanness, and the resulting worship of God that could result, was a reminder that in their sin God had provided a way back to Himself, and that they could be restored into His favour. For they were the people of His covenant.
There is no suggestion in all this that normal sex is sinful within the marriage relationship, only that it comes short of what man was intended to be in his ‘perfection', in his wholeness as in the image of God There will be no sex in Heaven.
“This is the law of him who has an issue, and of him whose seed of copulation goes from him, so that he is unclean by it, and of her who is sick with her impurity, and of him who has an issue, of the man, and of the woman, and of him who lies with her who is unclean.”
Again we have what might well be a colophon to this record. It describes the content of the record, and what it is about for filing purposes.