Leviticus 15:25-28

15:25 “‘When a woman’s discharge of blood flows ¹  many days not at the time of her menstruation, or if it flows beyond the time of her menstruation, ²  all the days of her discharge of impurity will be like the days of her menstruation – she is unclean. 15:26 Any bed she lies on all the days of her discharge will be to her like the bed of her menstruation, any furniture she sits on will be unclean like the impurity of her menstruation, 15:27 and anyone who touches them will be unclean, and he must wash his clothes, bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. ³ 

Purity Regulations from Female Bodily Discharges

15:28 “‘If ⁴  she becomes clean from her discharge, then she is to count off for herself seven days, and afterward she will be clean.

Haggai 2:13

2:13 Then Haggai asked, “If a person who is ritually unclean because of touching a dead body ⁵  comes in contact with one of these items, will it become unclean?” The priests answered, “It will be unclean.”

Luke 2:22-23

Jesus’ Presentation at the Temple

2:22 Now ⁶  when the time came for their ⁷  purification according to the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary ⁸  brought Jesus ⁹  up to Jerusalem ¹⁰  to present him to the Lord 2:23 (just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male ¹¹  will be set apart to the Lord” ¹² ),

¹ tn Heb “And a woman when the flow of her blood flows.”

² tn Heb “in not the time of her menstruation or when it flows on her menstruation.”

³ tn See the note on v. 5 above.

⁴ tn Heb “And if…” Although this clause is parallel to v. 13 above, it begins with וְאִם (vÿ’im, “and if”) here rather than וְכִי (vÿkhi, “and when/if”) there.

⁵ tn Heb “unclean of a person,” a euphemism for “unclean because of a dead person”; see Lev 21:11; Num 6:6. Cf. NAB “unclean from contact with a corpse.”

⁶ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic.

⁷ tc The translation follows most mss, including early and important ones ({א A B L}). Some copyists, aware that the purification law applied to women only, produced mss ({76 it^pt vg} [though the Latin word eius could be either masculine or feminine]) that read “her purification.” But the extant evidence for an unambiguous “her” is shut up to one late minuscule ({codex 76}) and a couple of patristic citations of dubious worth ({Pseudo-Athanasius} whose date is unknown, and the {Catenae in euangelia Lucae et Joannis}, edited by J. A. Cramer. The Catenae is a work of collected patristic sayings whose exact source is unknown [thus, it could come from a period covering hundreds of years]). A few other witnesses (D pc lat) read “his purification.” The KJV has “her purification,” following Beza’s Greek text (essentially a revision of Erasmus’). Erasmus did not have it in any of his five editions. Most likely Beza put in the feminine form αὐτῆς (auths) because, recognizing that the eius found in several Latin mss could be read either as a masculine or a feminine, he made the contextually more satisfying choice of the feminine. Perhaps it crept into one or two late Greek witnesses via this interpretive Latin back-translation. So the evidence for the feminine singular is virtually nonexistent, while the masculine singular αὐτοῦ (autou, “his”) was a clear scribal blunder. There can be no doubt that “their purification” is the authentic reading.

⁸ tn Grk “they”; the referents (Joseph and Mary) have been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁹ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

¹¹ tn Grk “every male that opens the womb” (an idiom for the firstborn male).

¹² sn An allusion to Exod 13:2, 12, 15.