things belonging to the worship of God, so that when they did approach, they did so with greater reverence and humility.  Moreover, in some of these the literal reason was that men should not be kept away from worshipping God through fear of coming in contact with lepers and others similarly afflicted with loathsome and contagious diseases.  In others, again, the reason was to avoid idolatrous worship:  because in their sacrificial rites the Gentiles sometimes employed human blood and seed.  All these bodily uncleannesses were purified either by the mere sprinkling of water, or, in the case of those which were more grievous, by some sacrifice of expiation for the sin which was the occasion of the uncleanness in question.

The figurative reason for these uncleannesses was that they were figures of various sins.  For the uncleanness of any corpse signifies the uncleanness of sin, which is the death of the soul.  The uncleanness of leprosy betokened the uncleanness of heretical doctrine:  both because heretical doctrine is contagious just as leprosy is, and because no doctrine is so false as not to have some truth mingled with error, just as on the surface of a leprous body one may distinguish the healthy parts from those that are infected.  The uncleanness of a woman suffering from a flow of blood denotes the uncleanness of idolatry, on account of the blood which is offered up.  The uncleanness of the man who has suffered seminal loss signifies the uncleanness of empty words, for “the seed is the word of God.”  The uncleanness of sexual intercourse and of the woman in child-birth signifies the uncleanness of original sin.  The uncleanness of the woman in her periods signifies the uncleanness of a mind that is sensualized by pleasure.  Speaking generally, the uncleanness contracted by touching an unclean thing denotes the uncleanness arising from consent in another’s sin, according to 2 Cor. 6:17:  “Go out from among them, and be ye separate . . . and touch not the unclean thing.”

Moreover, this uncleanness arising from the touch was contracted even by inanimate objects; for whatever was touched in any way by an unclean man, became itself unclean.  Wherein the Law attenuated the superstition of the Gentiles, who held that uncleanness was contracted not only by touch, but also by speech or looks, as Rabbi Moses states (Doct.  Perplex. iii) of a woman in her periods.  The mystical sense of this was that “to God the wicked and his wickedness are hateful alike” (Wis. 14:9).

There was also an uncleanness of inanimate things considered in themselves, such as the uncleanness of leprosy in a house or in clothes.  For just as leprosy occurs in men through a corrupt humor causing putrefaction and corruption in the flesh; so, too, through some corruption and excess of humidity or dryness, there arises sometimes a kind of corruption in the stones with which a house is built, or in clothes.  Hence the Law called this corruption by the name of