Luke 2:22-24

_ _ Luke 2:22-40. Purification of the virgin — Presentation of the Babe in the Temple-scene there with Simeon and Anna.

_ _ her purification — Though the most and best copies read “their,” it was the mother only who needed purifying from the legal uncleanness of childbearing. “The days” of this purification for a male child were forty in all (Leviticus 12:2, Leviticus 12:4), on the expiry of which the mother was required to offer a lamb for a burnt offering, and a turtle dove or a young pigeon for a sin offering. If she could not afford a lamb, the mother had to bring another turtle dove or young pigeon; and, if even this was beyond her means, then a portion of fine flour, but without the usual fragrant accompaniments of oil and frankincense, as it represented a sin offering (Leviticus 12:6-8; Leviticus 5:7-11). From the intermediate offering of “a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons,” we gather that Joseph and the Virgin were in poor circumstances (2 Corinthians 8:9), though not in abject poverty. Being a first-born male, they “bring him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.” All such had been claimed as “holy to the Lord,” or set apart to sacred uses, in memory of the deliverance of the first-born of Israel from destruction in Egypt, through the sprinkling of blood (Exodus 13:2). In lieu of these, however, one whole tribe, that of Levi, was accepted, and set apart to occupations exclusively sacred (Numbers 3:11-38); and whereas there were two hundred seventy-three fewer Levites than first-born of all Israel on the first reckoning, each of these first-born was to be redeemed by the payment of five shekels, yet not without being “presented (or brought) unto the Lord,” in token of His rightful claim to them and their service (Numbers 3:44-47; Numbers 18:15, Numbers 18:16). It was in obedience to this “law of Moses,” that the Virgin presented her babe unto the Lord, “in the east gate of the court called Nicanor’s Gate, where she herself would be sprinkled by the priest with the blood of her sacrifice” [Lightfoot]. By that Babe, in due time, we were to be redeemed, “not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18, 1 Peter 1:19), and the consuming of the mother’s burnt offering, and the sprinkling of her with the blood of her sin offering, were to find their abiding realization in the “living sacrifice” of the Christian mother herself, in the fullness of a “heart sprinkled from an evil conscience,” by “the blood which cleanseth from all sin.”