And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;
And when the days of her purification. This reading х autees (G846)] has hardly any support at all. All the best and most ancient manuscripts and versions read 'their purification' х autoon (G846)] - which some late transcribers had been afraid to write. But whether this is to be understood of mother and Babe together, or of Joseph and Mary, as the parents, the great fact that "we are shapen in iniquity, and in sin by our mothers conceived," which the Levitical rite was designed to proclaim, had no real place, and so could only be symbolically taught, in the present case; since "that which was conceived in the Virgin was of the Holy Spirit," and Joseph was only the Babe's legal father.
According to the law of Moses were accomplished. The days of purification, in the case of a male child, were forty in all (Leviticus 12:2; Leviticus 12:4).
They brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord. All the first-born males had been claimed as "holy to the Lord," or set apart to sacred uses, in memory of the deliverance of the first-born of Israel from destruction in Egypt, through the sprinkling of blood (Exodus 13:2). In lieu of these, however, one whole tribe, that of Levi, was accepted, and set apart to occupations exclusively sacred (Numbers 3:11-38); and whereas there were fewer Levites than first-born of all Israel on the first reckoning, each of these supernumerary first-born was to be redeemed by the payment of five shekels but not without being "presented [publicly] unto the Lord," in token of His rightful claim to them and their service. (Numbers 3:44-47; Numbers 18:15-16). It was in obedience to this "law of Moses," that the Virgin presented her Babe unto the Lord, 'in the east gate of the court called Nicanor's Gate, where herself would be sprinkled by the priest with the blood of her sacrifice' [Lightfoot]. By that Babe, in due time, we were to be redeemed, "not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18-19); and the consuming of the mother's burnt offering, and the sprinkling of her with the blood of her sin offering, were to find their abiding realization in the "living sacrifice" of the Christian mother herself, in the fullness of a "heart sprinkled from an evil conscience" by "the blood which cleanseth from all sin."