Leviticus 17:16

This law follows directly on the chapter’s teaching about blood. Leviticus 17:10–14 forbids eating blood, says that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and tells the hunter to pour out the blood of the game he catches. Verse 15 carries the same concern from the altar to the ordinary table, to meat that was never offered in sacrifice at all.

Two kinds of meat are named. “That which died of itself” translates nᵉbêlâh, a carcass, an animal that died naturally and was never slaughtered. “That which was torn with beasts” is ṭᵉrêphâh, an animal mangled or killed by wild animals. Both died without the slaughter that drained the blood from clean meat, so their flesh still held the blood, and whoever ate it ate the life God had claimed for himself.

God gives the reason for this care a few verses earlier: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11). Life belongs to God, and blood was the means he appointed for covering sin on the altar. Eating meat with its blood still in it treated lightly what God had set apart for atonement, and so it made the eater unclean.

The word for unclean, ṭâmêʼ, means to be or become unclean or defiled, and it is also used of a priest pronouncing someone unclean. Here it names the state the eater falls into until the evening.

Keeping away from such meat had practical benefits in a hot land, where flesh soon decays, but the reason the law itself gives is holiness. Israel belonged to the LORD and was to live as his people, apart from the nations around them, who had no such laws about blood and carrion. Over all the laws of clean and unclean food God sets his own call, “ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44–45). Deuteronomy repeats the ban on eating what dies of itself (Deuteronomy 14:21). Centuries later, when Ezekiel was told to eat defiled bread, he pleaded with the Lord that from his youth he had never eaten what died of itself or was torn in pieces (Ezekiel 4:14).

“Every soul” (nephesh) means every person, and the verse spells out who that includes: “whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger.” The first is the native-born Israelite and the second is the foreigner who had come to live among them. God holds both to the same standard of purity, because both dwell among the people where he has set his presence, and so the whole community is one holy people under his law. The Passover law speaks the same way: “One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you” (Exodus 12:48–49).

The remedy has three parts. The eater must “wash his clothes”, “bathe himself in water”, and “be unclean until the even”. The verb for washing clothes, kâbaç, means to wash, and Strong’s and BDB describe the way it was done, by treading the cloth underfoot, as a fuller cleaned garments. The verb for bathing, râchats, means to wash or bathe, the whole body or part of it, usually with water. So both his garments and his body are washed. These were the standard acts by which the law of Moses removed ritual defilement.

Then he waits. The uncleanness lasts until the evening, and with the close of the day the verse declares, “then shall he be clean.” God fixes both the remedy and its end. The person who ate such meat, even without meaning to, had a clear way back, and by evening he could take his full place again in the worship and life of the community. Such a law keeps before Israel how holy the God among them is, and it shows just as plainly that he provides the cleansing he requires.

Verse 16 gives the other path: “But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh; then he shall bear his iniquity.” The “them” are the clothes of verse 15, and the flesh is his body.

To “bear” is nâsâʼ, a verb with a very wide range that means to lift or carry. In this phrase it is the carrying of a burden, the responsibility for an act and its consequences. “Iniquity” is ʻâvôn, which means fault or iniquity and also the guilt and punishment that belong to it. Together the words say that the man who refuses the washing stays in his defiled state, and he carries the guilt and penalty of it himself, with nothing done to remove it.

In daily life this meant that he stayed unclean. An unclean person was kept from the tabernacle and from sharing in the worship and sacrifices of the people, and he could be kept apart from others in the camp so that his uncleanness did not spread to them or to holy things. The verse names no death penalty. Its weight lies in a person cut off from the sacred life of Israel and answerable to God for his state.

The uncleanness of verse 15 came from eating, and it was a ritual barrier to holy things. The guilt of verse 16 comes from refusing the washing God had given. A defilement left alone becomes a disobedience, and the law treats even a neglected ritual as a serious matter before God. The law for one who touches a dead body follows the same pattern of uncleanness and required cleansing (Numbers 19:11–13), and the law about presumptuous sin shows how each person answers for his own disregard of God’s word (Numbers 15:30–31).

All of this sits within a larger provision. The laws on clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11 mark the line between what Israel may and may not eat. The Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 shows God’s means of cleansing the whole people. Leviticus 17 as a whole teaches the sacredness of blood and life, and the chapters that follow call the whole people to holiness in daily living.

The washing rite belongs to the ceremonial laws of the old covenant, and Christ has fulfilled it. Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), turning the attention of his people from the purity of food to the purity of the heart. In Peter’s vision God told him, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:15), so what was once unclean food has been made clean.

At the Jerusalem council the apostles asked Gentile believers to abstain from things strangled and from blood (Acts 15:20). That counsel served the unity of Jewish and Gentile believers in the church and kept them from giving offence to one another, and salvation itself remained by grace.

What remains for us is what the law was teaching all along: God is holy, life is sacred to him, and his people need his cleansing. Peter carries the old command straight into the life of the church: “Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15–16).

The man who would not wash bore his own iniquity. Isaiah foretells a Servant who would carry the iniquity of others: “by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11). Peter says the same of Jesus, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). John the Baptist pointed to him as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Water and the setting sun made an Israelite clean until his next defilement. The blood of Christ purges our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14), and “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). By his offering, made once for all, we are sanctified (Hebrews 10:10), and so we may draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22). The washing of Leviticus covered a day. The cleansing Christ gives lasts for ever.

God cares about something as ordinary as a meal. He claimed the life in every creature as his own, and he taught his people to honour it even at their tables. He held the stranger and the native to one standard, because both lived in his presence. And when a person became unclean, he named the remedy and promised its end: wash, bathe, wait until evening, “then shall he be clean.”

The warning of verse 16 is real, and it shows how seriously God takes our refusal of the cleansing he offers. Yet the same God has given his Son to bear the iniquity that we could never carry away ourselves. The law that left the unwashed man with his own guilt points us to the one who took our guilt on himself, and in him we are clean.