And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying
three
and thirty days
That is, so many more, in all forty; for though at the end of
seven days she was in some respects free from her uncleanness,
yet not altogether, but remained in the blood of her purifying,
or in the purifying of her blood, which was more and more
purified, and completely at the end of forty days: so with the
Persians it is said, a new mother must avoid everything for forty
days; when that time is passed, she may wash and be purified
F14; and which perhaps Zoroastres, the
founder of the Persian religion, at least the reformer of it,
being a Jew, as is by some supposed, he might take it from hence:
she shall touch no hallowed thing;
as the tithe, the heave offering, the flesh of the peace
offerings, as Aben Ezra explains it, if she was a priest's wife:
nor come into the sanctuary;
the court of the tabernacle of the congregation, or the court of
the temple, as the same writer observes; and so with the Greeks,
a pregnant woman might not come into a temple before the fortieth
day F15, that is, of her delivery:
until the days of her purifying be fulfilled;
until the setting of the sun of the fortieth day; on the morrow
of that she was to bring the atonement of her purification, as
Jarchi observes; (See Gill on
Leviticus 12:6).