Understanding purity laws and how they affected the average person in the second temple period, the best illustration lies in the layout of the Temple itself.
On the outermost eastern edge was the Court of the Gentiles, there were vendors selling souvenirs, food, and currency exchangers. It was created as a way of offering foreigners both civilian and governmental, to walk around the Temple and enjoy it without entering into it and violating or defiling it. The penalty for violating this law was death.
Closer in, and further to the west, was the court of women (women were separated in order to be with theirs peers and because they were seen as unclean due to menstruation) then there was the court of the Israelites.
Still further in there was the court of the Priests, and finally there was the Holy of the Holies. Every court was a further degree of proximity to the Holy of Holies and therefore God Himself. Which is how impurity was and still is ideally defined. In the sanctuary of the Holy of Holies, only the High Priest could enter.
Even then, he could only enter in on Yom Kippur because of the sacrificial duties which must be performed there and, on that day, specifically. During which time he had a rope tied around him in the event that he died, which happened a handful of times, the other priests could pull him out without violating the Holy of Holies. It sounds made up, but it is true.
This translated to the ways people were categorized in the purity system. There was a strict pecking order. With the High Priest at the top, just below God Himself, then the Levites/Priestly class, with men, then women, children, and after that were classes outcasts like tax collectors, the disabled, lepers, and more. This purity system is best illustrated by this passage:
“Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.” Leviticus 19:2 KJV
The emphasis was on, in my view, an almost unattainable goal of perfection. Which is why the abject poor were out cast and considered dirty, impure, because they could not afford to pay tithing on goods to be used during sacrificial rituals and ceremonies. While being rich did not, in and of itself, guarantee purity and cleanliness, it was seen as proof of God’s favor.
In the Second Temple Period Jesus lived and taught in, there was a place for everything and everything in its place in society. What was pure in one place was impure in another. It may have been a system that helped society navigate society better, at least at first, but it soon evolved into a system where people were meant to serve it rather than a system that was intended to serve the people.
Lepers are prominently featured within the stories we have of Jesus. Because disability and disease were seen as unclean — literally and metaphorically — most saw lepers as having done or said something sinful, something impure.
They were believed as deserving their fate. Jesus and His disciples came upon a man born blind and the disciples asked Jesus whose sin caused his condition, his or his parents? Jesus said neither was the case and then he healed the man in John 9:1-7 KJV
“[And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.]
And his disciples asked him, saying, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.”
Jesus challenged and even rebuked the purity system and any who tried to enforce it. He does so again and again. The Good Samaritan is often cited as a story of compassion, which it is. But it also heavily rebukes the purity system by showing that it is more important than following a rulebook of purity laws. It’s not wrong to place importance on purity, but people are always more important than rules, always. Jesus reacted only when people put the importance of rules over the importance of people.
In the parable a man has been nearly beaten to death. He appeared dead or close to it, the two Priests that came by could not touch him without being deemed unclean themselves. They would have been unable to perform their priestly duties for a period of time. So, they refused to get close enough to know for certain his condition.
They put their duties, their purity laws, and their rules above the life of another human.
Jesus found himself in hot water more than once over healing people on the sabbath which was also against the law. However, people were more important to Him than following the rules. God would rather you heal on the sabbath than allow for injury or sickness to go unchecked.
The scripture in Leviticus spawned the purity ethos, rules, and laws is one that Jesus radically altered by switching one word for another:
“Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” Luke 6:36 KJV
In the King James version, the word used is merciful, but it can easily and accurately translated as compassion. Either way, the spin Jesus puts on what is more important, for those who heard him speak, remains clear. I don’t think he framed it this way because mercy is closer to the truth than holiness is, I think it was because it offered the course correction his audience needed most.
People with infirmities, disabilities, the abject poor, and tax collectors were all outcast in the Second Temple society. They were not spoken to.
They were left to die on the side of the road. In the view of most, they had done or said something and their punishment was deserved. To intervene would be to interfere with God’s plan. Jesus did nothing if not interfere with the purity system. One of his most powerful parables was The Pharisee and The Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14 KJV:
“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
The word publican is how tax collector was translated and “smote” means to beat the chest. It is, and has been, a form of mourning in the Jewish tradition. The Tax Collector mourned his impure and unrighteous life. But in recognizing his wrongs and repenting for them he was, according to Jesus, forgiven and justified by God.
Many, even today, hold off on helping those who need help for the same reason people refused to help those in need during Christ’s lifetime. The reason is that the people who have had horrible things befall them deserve those things, that they are justifiable punishments. That the only reason they are in a bad place is because they’ve done bad things. They only suffer because they did not follow the rules. And almost every horror is overlooked and brushed aside guilt free and never given a second thought.
How often is any purity system turned into a pecking order system where one person judges themselves to be better than others as the Pharisee does in the parable above? It almost always becomes an us vs them mindset. And whoever is labeled as “them” easily and often become subhuman. Once that happens any horror inflicted on, or suffered by, them is excused.
Jesus gave his original audience the tools to shift their paradigm. Those tools are timeless and universal. We would do well to use them to shift our own way of seeing.