Jewish Washing
Recent discoveries have dramatically increased our knowledge of the water storage capacity in Jerusalem, and other centres in Israel during the New Testament period, which impinge upon previously held ideas about Jewish libations. The most common form of water catchment and holding was the cistern. It was commonly a pear-shaped reservoir into which water could run from a roof, courtyard or from a water channel. From about the thirteenth century BC it was plastered and its opening stopped by a suitably cut stone, large enough for protection, but sometimes quite heavy (cf Gen 29:8-10).
“It must have been a frequent misfortune, in an earthquake-fractured land, to find the stored waters of a laboriously cut cistern seeping away through a new fissure in the rocks (cf the imagery of an apostate people in Jer 2:13). In such abandoned reservoirs there is usually a mound of debris underneath the opening, consisting of dirt and rubbish, blown or knocked in, shattered remnants of water containers, and not infrequently skeletons. These may represent the result of accident, suicide, or some such incarceration as that which Jeremiah endured, although he did not experience the usual fatal end of exhaustion and drowning in water and mud. In one cistern at Gezer, archaeologists discovered a dozen or more male skeletons and the upper half of a female who had been sawn asunder at the waist (cf. Heb 11:37). These were prisoners who, unlike Joseph (Gen 37:20-29) and Jeremiah (Jer 38), were not rescued. Similar discoveries were made in cisterns at Ai and Tell en-Nasbeh. Complex structures have been unearthed at Jerusalem, Masada, Samaria, and other locations. Many cisterns constructed in antiquity are still in use.” (“Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology”. E.M. Blaiklock and R.K. Harrison, Editors. The Zondervan Corporation 1983.
At Qumran a number of cisterns were unearthed, one of which had fourteen stone steps leading down into it, suggesting that it had been used for ritual ablutions by the religious community there. The significance of the cisterns in relation to baptisms has only recently been understood with fresh archaeological evidence to which we shall shortly turn.
A second form of water storage used lavers especially for the ceremonial lustration, the washing of the human body rather than to the cleansing of other objects, such as clothes. Ritual ablutions with water were required of priests and Levites before certain ceremonial occasions (Exod 30:20; Lev 8:6; Num 8:21) and were also prescribed for a variety of impure and unclean conditions (Lev 14:9; 15:13; Num 19:10). In Isa 1:16 and 4:4, water is used figuratively to describe cleansing from sin, a usage found in the New Testament with special reference to baptism (Eph 5:26, Titus 3:5). In Heb 6:2 the author alludes to pointless arguments about the relative merits of Christian and other ablutions, while in 9:9-10 he notes that the ritual washings of Leviticus have been outmoded by the work of Christ.
The lavers (basins) of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 7:38) consisted of round bronze bowls fitted into a square framework (2 Chron 6:12-13) and contained water for cleansing for the sacrificial offerings (2 Chron 4:6). An analogous tripod base that originally held a metal laver has been recovered from Ras Shamra (Ugarit). (“Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology”. E.M. Blaiklock and R.K. Harrison, Editors. The Zondervan Corp. 1983.)
The most recent discovery that has helped us understand the size and purpose of the Laver, has been the instructions for the “Laver House” in one of the more recently translated Dead Sea Scrolls: “The Temple Scroll” (Tr. Yigael Yadin. pp.130-133. George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. 1985). Professor Yigael Yadin writes of this large building which measured 30 cubits square and which was surrounded by wide steps to approach the Laver: “The scroll’s description of the interior arrangements of the House of the Laver makes important mention of `niches’ in the interior wall. The scroll prescribes that these niches were to be `overlaid with gold’...to be set at eye level `from the ground four cubits high.’They were designed as receptacles for the garments of those using the laver.
The arrangement described in the scroll, together with the parallels in the Mishnah and Maimonides, are reminiscent of bath-houses in general during that period. Writing of a case in which an ordinary ritual bath-house is mentioned, the Mishnah’s Tohoroth (Purities) 7:7 begins a text with: `If a man left his vessels in a wall-niche of the bath-house attendants…’ During my own excavation at Masada, we discovered an installation very similar…Alongside the bath itself stood a square building with rows of small niches in its interior walls.
The niches in the House of the Laver were plated with gold because they held holy garments. The author attaches great importance to the whole subject of purity and impurity – a later section of the scroll goes into great detail – and he therefore gives careful prescriptions to ensure the purity of the priestly garments. His prime concern is with the clothes to be donned by the priests before they come `to minister in the holy place’; they were not to approach the altar unless `clothed with the holy garments’. But he also issues careful orders about the reverse procedure of clothes-changing, when the priests, after officiating and sacrificing at the altar, change from sacred to ordinary garments. These orders end with the ban on priests when leaving the inner court and going out to the people to do so while still dressed in their holy robes: `and they shall not communicate holiness to my people with their holy garments in which they minister’.
The terminology and style of these commands are clearly influenced to a considerable extent by the language in chapters 42 and 44 of Ezekiel – particularly the ban on priests from wearing their official garments when mixing with the people. They are warned that `when they go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering, and lay them in the holy chambers and they shall put on other garments’.
Immediately following this text on the garments are the author’s prescriptions for the disposal of the unclean water after the priests had finished bathing. This water was not to be used or even `touched by anyone, for it is mixed with the blood of the burnt offering’. The command, therefore, was to `make a conduit around the laver, near its house. And the conduit shall lead from the house of the laver into a pit, extending downwards into the land (ground), (so that) the water…flowing into it…will be lost in the land.’ Thus, the water mixed with the blood washed off from the priests after their sacrificing was to flow from the House of the Laver directly into the ground. This method was similar to the one governing the disposal of the blood that dripped from the altar.”
