Leviticus 15 Bible study: Until the evening

Look at the order. First a man's discharge that goes on (15:2-15), then a man's emission (15:16-17), then a man and a woman together (15:18), then a woman's period (15:19-24), then a woman's discharge that goes on (15:25-30). The two ends match: each discharge that goes on has seven days counted when it stops (15:13, 15:28) and the same offering on the eighth day (15:14-15, 15:29-30). The summary names every case: "This is the law of him who has a discharge" (15:32), "and of her who has her period, and of a man or woman who has a discharge" (15:33).

Leviticus 15:25→leads toMark 5:34

The law speaks of a woman who "has a discharge of her blood many days": "She is unclean" (15:25), and "Whoever touches these things shall be unclean" (15:27). Mark tells of "A certain woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years" (Mark 5:25), who "came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes" (Mark 5:27), and "Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up" (Mark 5:29). Jesus said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be cured of your disease" (Mark 5:34). Luke and Matthew tell it too (Luke 8:43-48; Matthew 9:20-22). None of the Gospels names Leviticus or says she was unclean, so reading the two together is an interpretation: some see Jesus making well one whom the law counted unclean, because her condition is the one 15:25 describes; others read it as a healing account that doesn't turn on the law, because the Gospels don't mention it.

זוֹבzovsay ZOHV

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "issue". Strong's: "from 2100", the verb zuv, "to flow freely (as water)". It is the noun behind "discharge" through the whole chapter, from "because of his discharge he is unclean" (15:2) to "the uncleanness of her discharge" (15:30). All 13 of its uses in the Hebrew Bible are in this chapter. The verb it comes from is the one in "a land flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8).