Leviticus 12 · Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
CHAPTER 12 Le 12:1-8 . Woman's Uncleanness by Childbirth. 2. If a woman, &c.-- The mother of a boy was ceremonially unclean for a week, at the end of which the child was circumcised ( Ge 17:12 ; Ro 4:11-13 ); the mother of a girl for two weeks ( Le 12:5 )--a stigma on the sex ( 1Ti 2:14 , 15 ) for sin, which was removed by Christ; everyone who came near her during that time contracted a similar defilement. After these periods, visitors might approach her though she was still excluded from the public ordinances of religion [Le 12:4].
6-8. the days of her purifying-- Though the occasion was of a festive character, yet the sacrifices appointed were not a peace offering, but a burnt offering and sin offering, in order to impress the mind of the parent with recollections of the origin of sin, and that the child inherited a fallen and sinful nature. The offerings were to be presented the day after the period of her separation had ended--that is, forty-first for a boy, eighty-first for a girl.