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.

The furniture of Israel’s worship tent included a large washing vessel near the entrance.

"Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and put water in it. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Exodus 30:18-20

For the priests who offered sacrifices there, washing was both a practical necessity, working around butchered animals, and also symbolic of moral issues, recognizing that evil pollutes our lives as surely and as continuously as filth contaminates our bodies. But the water in the laver symbolizes God’s readiness to cleanse and forgive.

There's a huge number of references in the Bible to human sin and failure – words like evil, guilt, iniquity, unrighteousness, transgressions perversity, faults, etc. These words occur about 1800 times; each word brings its own nuance of meaning to the general concept of moral failure. One of the deep themes of the Bible is that there is a huge toxic flow running across the sands of the human race, as foul and harmful to God’s creation as all the oil spills the world has ever seen. It’s not a pretty picture – and we’re all tainted and infected by its deadly moral virus.

But over against this terrible condition – our human condition – is an enormous divine grace.

You’ll find words for God’s gift of water - words like rain, streams, river, seas, dew, clouds, springs, wells, and water itself almost the same number of times – about 1800 references. The river of God’s grace is sufficient to expunge the whole filthy mess, to purge the poison from the earth and to make the foulest heart clean.

Image Sources:
Washing hands - Stoko Cupran
Laver - Eilat Today
Michaelangelo Original Sin - Ubiquitous on the Internet
Plitvice Lake National Park, Croatia - Jack Brauer