CSI - Ancient Israel Water Ritual

What should you do if a dead body is found in a field, and your basic detective work cannot discover a killer? Here is an ancient water ritual that ensured that cold cases didn’t just suffer the indignity of civil neglect.

You can read the extended ritual in Deuteronomy 21:1-9. Here is a brief summary:

Laver - God's Purity

If the first function of water is for human survival – for drinking and irrigating crops, the second function of water is for washing. Washing faces, hands and clothes is both hygienic and pleasing to the senses. It also symbolizes inner cleansing, purifying of the spirit.

Every culture and religion has its rituals of ablution – ceremonial cleansing. Hindus bathe in the Ganges, Cherokee in the Southern US have a ‘going to water’ ceremony; other indigenous people believe the body’s own sweat purifies them, The Qur’an tells the faithful to wash before prayers and if water isn’t available, they can ‘wash’ their hands in sand or earth. (Surah 5:6) The Jews also had a complex system of washings, and the rabbis of the Second Temple period around the time of Christ had mastered the art of complex washings.

Taking the Plunge

Easter is on the horizon, so for the next three weeks, we’re going to follow water-stories that revolve around Jesus. Today, Jesus takes the plunge.

Ah, the amazing wonder of water!  Many religions practice ritual washing. Hindus plunge into the Ganges. Shinto worshippers in Japan seek cleansing under waterfalls, orthodox Jews use a mikvah to represent a flowing stream.
  

Baptism is an act of abandoning yourself to the water and embracing the purity, healing and renewal the water represents. It calls for courage and resolve. It says, ‘forget decorum, to hell with face-saving, a new life beckons, it’s time to answer the call’.

800 years before John the Baptist, the Syrian general Naaman, who had a dire skin disease, came to Israel looking for help. The prophet Elisha told him to wash seven times in the Jordan River and he would be healed. At first Naaman was offended - the Jordan was a mediocre river, quite inferior to the rivers of his homeland. But in the end he humbled himself, plunged in, and the God of Israel healed him.

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

Guilt is a terrible thing.  But if there is something worse than guilt, its name would be Denial.  Denial is the paralyzing refusal to come to terms with the monster that is destroying you.

Helen Rynne as Lady Macbeth

A grim scene in Macbeth illustrates the destructive power of repressed and unacknowledged guilt:  Lady Macbeth sleep-walking the halls of her castle with a candle, trying in vain to scour the damning blood-guilt from her hands.

Yet here's a spot . . .

Out, damned spot! out, I say! . . .

Who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him? . . .

What, will these hands ne'er be clean? . . .

Here's the smell of the blood still:
All the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten this little hand.

Oh, oh, oh!

Her façade is cracking; denial is hard to sustain.