I'm attempting to answer your question. But with the corrected second posting, I'm somewhat confused as to what the question is. If I'm understanding you correctly, your question is not about the redeeming of the firstborn (as in the Exodus text). Instead your question is about the Lukan text and how it interacts with the Leviticus prescriptions. As a result, I'm going to walk through the Leviticus context first, and then tackle the Lukan context.
Leviticus 12
Kleinig offer this commentary for the Leviticus 12:1-8 section:
The period of religious quarantine was concluded by an act of
sacrifice. The woman who had given birth to a child offered a lamb as
a burnt offering and a turtledove or pigeon as a sin offering (12:6).
If she was too poor to afford a lamb, she brought a bird instead
(12:8). She entered the sacred precincts and brought the offerings to
the priest on duty at the entrance. These two sacrifices performed two
specific functions. Through the rite of atonement with the blood from
both sacrifices, the woman was cleansed from any impurity that she had
incurred from her flow of blood (12:7). Through the burning up of the
lamb on the altar she was accepted by God and reinstated as a member
of the congregation. She was once again ritually clean. She therefore
had access to God's holiness and his blessing. That meant too that she
was once again open to the gift of another child from him.
The observance of this rite of passage had a profound impact on the
life of every mother. It connected her life as a mother with her
participation in the divine service and her reception of blessing from
God. Negatively, it ensured that she did not become involved as a
woman in pagan practices that affirmed her status as a child-producer
and sought to empower her by giving her access to cosmic life-power.
Positively, it affirmed her status as a full member of the holy
congregation and recognized her role as a bearer of blessing from God.
The reference in 12:2 to the mother as the seed-bearer, the
offspring-producer, hints at this (see "Fulfillment by Christ" below).
Her vocation as a mother then was connected with her call to holiness.
What's more, the continuity and survival of her family-and, more
broadly, of Israel-depended on her and her access to the blessing
gained from the presence of God in the sacred domain. See figure 16.
By this legislation the menstrual and reproductive cycle of a mother
was coordinated and incorporated into the liturgical calendar with its
ordered enactment of the sacrificial ritual. Her time was synchronized
with God's time.
While this chapter deals mainly with the state of a mother after
childbirth, it also mentions, in passing in 12:3, the requirement for
her to attend to the circumcision of any son that she produced. His
circumcision occurred after her initial week of social seclusion. It
marked her social reengagement on the eighth day after his birth. In
the rite of circumcision, the foreskin was removed.
Whereas in many tribal societies circumcision had traditionally been,
and still often is, a rite of passage that was performed at the onset
of puberty to turn a boy into a man fit for marriage and adult life
(cf. Gen 17:25), God had made it the mark or sign of his covenant with
Abraham (Gen 17:9–14). By his Word he established it as a rite in
which an infant male became a member of his clan, a beneficiary of his
covenant with Abraham (Gen 17:10–11) and a member of the liturgical
community (Ex 12:48). This involved two powerful ritual reversals to
the traditional pattern. The rite was not performed by the future
fatherin-law of the boy, but by his own father, the head of his family
(Gen 17:23). It was not done to an adolescent boy in early puberty to
make a man of him, but to an eight-day old infant (Gen 17:12; Lev
12:3) to make him part of God's kinsfolk, a male called on to pass on
the seed and the blessing of Abraham to his descendants. (pp. 268-269)
Considerations
While all of Kleinig’s comments are worthy of consideration, his concluding comments are especially worthy of our attention. He reminds us that these OT regulations were written with the ‘backdrop’ of contrasting with pagan religions. Circumcision connected the boy with the covenant of Abraham and with the liturgical community.
Leviticus 15
While the issue of clean vs. unclean is brought up in Leviticus 12, in chapter 15, Moses goes into more detail. In this context, Kleinig writes:
Theological Significance
This speech, which comes at the end of the manual of impurities,
provides us with a theological grammar of bodily impurity. As such, it
is typical for the theological understanding of impurity in Leviticus,
for the sense of impurity
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has to do with threats to the integrity and health of the human body.
It is exemplified, most characteristically and universally, by the
attitude of women and men to their genitals and their use in sexual
activity. Human beings oscillate between a sense of spiritual awe at
their sexuality and a sense of physical disgust with their sexual
organs, between a belief in the possible supernatural power of
sexuality and the fear of actual contamination from it.
The rulings in this chapter work on the rather indiscriminate, raw
sense of sexual impurity that is often associated with sexual
intercourse, menstruation, seminal ejaculations, and genital
infection. They use five different cases to reinterpret impurity
theologically and so reshape the attitude of the Israelites to their
genitals and their sexual use. They do not try to explain away the
common human sense of bodily impurity and sexual defilement as
primitive and irrational, but they treat it positively by
discriminating between various degrees of impurity and prescribing
appropriate pastoral rites of purification.
The most significant feature of this legislation is that it does not
locate the source of genital impurity in either of the sexes or in
their sexual organs. People do not generate impurity; it is something
extrinsic to them and their sexual organs, an invasive and infective
power. It is identified quite practically with the genital discharges
found outside the human body. It belongs to the unclean domain that is
associated with the underworld and its powers, the realm of death and
of anti-god. So, even though impurity is experienced most tangibly as
something physical, it is in itself as much a spiritual as a physical
state of being, a power that impinges on the sexuality of men and
women. The Israelites lived together as a community in the common
domain that was caught between two realms, the holy realm of God and
the counter-realm of impurity-the fallen, sinful world. Consequently,
they were all more or less unclean from their involvement in various
kinds of impurity, just as they were all more or less clean from their
involvement with God and his holiness. None of them were inherently
clean and so capable of making others clean. Only God could do that.
The laws in this chapter distinguish major long-term impurity from
minor short-term impurity, just as they distinguish minor rites of
purification from major rites of purification.
This theological grammar of bodily purity explores three different
dimensions of impurity. The first had to do with the physical vitality
and integrity of the body with its reproductive organs in the order of
creation. God created the genitals for the purpose of reproduction.
They could fail to fulfill their potential for procreation by
pathological malfunction (15:2b–12, 25–27) or operational dysfunction
(15:16–24). If the sexual organs had an abnormal discharge, they had
lost their power to achieve reproduction; if they had an external
discharge of semen or blood apart from sexual intercourse, they
thereby failed to achieve reproduction. Thus God's creative purpose
for them was frustrated. The flow of life from God did not pass
through them to another person.
The second dimension had to do with the use of male and female organs
in sexual intercourse. The classification of abnormal and normal
genital dis
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charges as unclean and the cause of impurity served to regulate sexual
activity in Israelite marriages and families. It stopped those who had
abnormal discharges from having sexual intercourse with their
partners, so spreading their infection. While it prevented a man from
having sex with a woman during her period, relieving her of his sexual
demands, it also encouraged sex during the other three weeks of the
month.
Most importantly, the classification of clean and unclean gave a
structure for handling the vague sense of sexual impurity and limited
the scope for the spread of impurity by people with normal sexual
discharges, in sexual intercourse or apart from it. This is most
evident in the careful formulation of the rules for a menstruating
woman. She did not by herself pollute anybody; only her discharge did
that. As she went about her household work, she could safely touch
anyone and anything in her home, without contaminating them. The
members of her household did not need to fear her and shun her with
disgust as a danger to them. These rules therefore freed people with
some form of sexual impurity to engage in their normal business with
each other in their families.
The third and most significant dimension of these rulings had to do
with the ritual status of men and women before God. It involved the
Israelites as members of the liturgical community. These rulings
defined impurity ritually and theologically. Thus, if people were
unclean from any genital discharge, they were not allowed to come
before God at the sanctuary and touch anything that is holy (cf.
12:4). If they brought their impurity with them into the sacred realm,
they defiled the sanctuary (15:31). This form of defilement was the
worst kind of sacrilege; it resulted in death from God. Those who
defiled God's holiness died in their impurity.
This theological understanding of impurity helps to explain some of
the most puzzling features of this chapter. If we operate only with
hygienic and social notions of impurity, we will not be able to figure
out why semen and menstrual blood are held to be pollutants. They are,
after all, normal and natural substances emitted by healthy people.
But impurity is a ritual, theological category.
The classification of semen and menstrual blood as pollutants makes
good sense in a pagan, animist environment such as ancient Israel
faced. They were commonly regarded as supernatural substances with
life-giving power if rightly used, but dangerous if used in the wrong
way or by the wrong person. They were therefore often used in ritual,
magic, and sorcery. Many people in the ancient world also believed
that certain families and nations were bearers of "holy seed" and
"divine blood" because they traced their origin mythologically to an
ancestor who had sexual intercourse with a god or goddess.
God's classification of semen and menstrual blood as impurities
desacralized them and prevented the Israelites from engaging in pagan
and occult practices. Since the emission of semen made people unclean,
no couple could ever have sexual intercourse at the sanctuary as part
of any ritual enactment, nor could any man present his "seed" as an
offering to the Lord. Thus these laws
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located sexual intercourse securely in the common realm. Sex was not,
under any circumstance, sacred; it was not at all divine. Yet this
teaching still associated reproduction with the will of God and the
flow of life that came from him into Israelite homes and families.
This ritual-religious definition of sexual impurity resulted in
corresponding ritual-religious definition of sexual purity. If people
were clean, they were fit for God and contact with the holy things of
God. They could enter the sanctuary without defiling it. They received
life and blessing from God; he empowered them to procreate. He too
instituted the rites of purification for them, whether it was by
laundering their clothes and taking a bath or by presenting sacrifices
for their release from impurity and restoration. His Word empowered
these rites. Through them he purified his people, so that they could
once again stand in his presence and share in his holiness.
Summary
Kleinig notes how the human tendency, when it comes to sexuality (esp. in the Canaanite context as a contrasting backdrop) is either to worship sex (and all that goes along with it) or to be disgusted by it. God's word clears away the extreme misuses/misunderstandings and puts it back on firm, practical ground.
So also, Kleinig's exploration of the three dimensions of impurity are well-treated.
NT Fulfillment and Considerations
In connecting the OT to its NT fulfillment, Kleinig offers this commentary:
In keeping with the law in Lev 12:3, Jesus was circumcised on the
eighth day after his birth (Lk 2:21). He fulfilled this aspect of the
law just as he fulfilled the whole of it, for, as Just notes, "in the
circumcision of the one who represents all humanity, all people are
circumcised once and for all."" He entered into the covenant that God
had made with Abraham and received the blessing that had been promised
to him.
Christ, in turn, replaced the rite of circumcision with his own
circumcision, the circumcision performed by God the Father rather than
by human hands (Col 2:11-13). That supernatural act of circumcision is
enacted in Baptism. In Baptism the whole "body of flesh" is "put off"
by burial with Christ and resurrection with him (Col 2:11-12). All
baptized believers, whether male or female, Jew or Greek, are members
of the one body of Christ (Col 3:11–15). Those who undergo this
circumcision are qualified to participate in the service of God the
Father by the Holy Spirit (Phil 3:3).
Mary, the mother of Jesus, involved him in her purification after his
birth (Lk 2:22–24). She and Joseph brought him to the temple for the
first time to include him in her purification on the fortieth day
after his birth, even though the law did not require the son (Jesus)
to be present for this. Since he was her firstborn son, he was offered
to God at the same time as she was purified by the sacrifice of two
birds (cf. Ex 13:2, 12; Neh 10:36). Yet no mention is made of his
redemption then or later. Luke thereby indicated that the whole of his
life was consecrated to the service of God (cf. Lk 1:35). Luke quite
deliberately connected Mary's purification to Christ's consecration,
for she was purified by her son-as are all the saints-for access to
the heavenly sanctuary. (p. 270)
Considerations
We note that, in the Lukan context, the holiness of the child that she gives birth to sanctifies Mary.
Likewise Kleinig notes for us that, in the Pauline context, baptism is the corresponding fulfillment of circumcision (and its NT replacement). Paul brings up the context of circumcision and baptism in two places...
Galatians 3-4
Here is a summary of Paul's flow of thought in Galatians 3-4:
- Scripture reveals to us that the world is held as a prisoner to sin (“ἀλλὰ συνέκλεισεν ἡ γραφὴ τὰ πάντα ὑπὸ ἁμαρτίαν” (Γαλάτας 3·22 THGNT-T))
- Baptism clothes us with Christ (“ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε, χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε.” (Γαλάτας 3·27 THGNT-T))
- Baptism gives us the status of 'sons' in God's kingdom (“εἰ δὲ ὑμεῖς χριστοῦ, ἄρα τοῦ Ἁβραὰμ σπέρμα ἐστέ, κατ’ ἐπαγγελίαν κληρονόμοι.” (Γαλάτας 3·29 THGNT-T))
Colossians 2
Again, we note Pauls flow of thought...
- Circumcision is replaced fulfilled by Baptism (“ἐν ᾧ καὶ περιετμήθητε περιτομῇ ἀχειροποιήτῳ ἐν τῇ ἀπεκδύσει τοῦ σώματος τῆς σαρκός, ἐν τῇ περιτομῇ τοῦ χριστοῦ,” (Κολασσαεῖς 2·11 THGNT-T))
- Baptism is a good work that God performs in and for us in which he delivers to us spiritual life (“συνταφέντες αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ βαπτίσματι ἐν ᾧ καὶ συνηγέρθητε διὰ τῆς πίστεως τῆς ἐνεργείας τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν.” (Κολασσαεῖς 2·12 THGNT-T))
Theological Considerations
Jesus' circumcision begins his active obedience where Jesus, as our substitute, places himself under the law to obey all the laws we could not obey:
“<4> But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, <5> to redeem those under the law, that we
might receive adoption to sonship” (Galatians 4:4–5 NIV11-GKE)
God's word (esp. Paul) connects baptism to circumcision as the NT fulfillment of circumcision. In baptism people have the name of the
Triune God placed on them, and as a result are brought into God's family as 'sons' (Gal. 4). In baptism they are given resurrection (Galatians 3; Romans 6). In baptism people are given the forgiveness of sins (Gal. 3).
This thought is nothing at all new. Since Paul teaches this so clearly, we find the theologians in the early church repeating this:
ORIGEN: So, when he died, we died with him, and when he rose, we rose
with him. Likewise, we were also circumcised along with him. After his
circumcision, we were cleansed by a solemn purification. Hence we have
no need at all for a circumcision of the flesh. You should know that
he was circumcised for our sake. Listen to Paul’s clear proclamation.
He says, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and
you have come to fullness of life in him, who is the head of all rule
and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision
made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the
circumcision of Christ. And you were buried with him in baptism, in
which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of
God, who raised him from the dead.”1 Therefore his death, his
resurrection and his circumcision took place for our sake.
(Arthur A. Just and Thomas C. Oden, eds. Luke. vol. 3 of Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture. ICCS/Accordance electronic ed.
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 44.)
Another example:
BEDE: He therefore received in the flesh the circumcision decreed by
the law, although he appeared in the flesh absolutely without any
blemish of pollution. He who came in the likeness of sinful flesh4—not
in sinful flesh—did not turn away from the remedy by which sinful
flesh was ordinarily made clean. Similarly, not because of necessity
but for the sake of example, he also submitted to the water of
baptism, by which he wanted the people of the new law of grace to be
washed from the stain of sins….
(Arthur A. Just and Thomas C. Oden, eds. Luke. vol. 3 of Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture. ICCS/Accordance electronic ed.
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 44.)
A final example:
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: St. Paul says that “neither circumcision counts
for anything nor uncircumcision.”11 On the eighth day Christ rose from
the dead and gave us the spiritual circumcision. He then commanded the
holy apostles, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.”12 And we affirm that the spiritual circumcision takes
place chiefly in holy baptism, when Christ makes us partakers of the
Holy Spirit too. Of this Joshua, that Jesus of old, who became the
leader of the Israelites after Moses, was also a type. He led the
children of Israel across the Jordan, then made them stop and
immediately circumcised them with knives of stone. So when we have
crossed the Jordan, Christ circumcises us with the power of the Holy
Spirit, not by purifying the flesh but rather by cutting off the
defilement that is in our souls. On the eighth day, therefore, Christ
was circumcised and, as I said, received his name. We were saved by
him and through him, because “in him also you were circumcised with a
circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in
the circumcision of Christ. And you were buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him.”13 His death, therefore, was
for our sake, as were also his resurrection and his circumcision. For
he died, so that we who have died together with him in his dying to
sin, would no longer live for sin. Thus if we have died together with
him, we shall also live together with him.14 He is said to have died
to sin, not because he had sinned, for he was without sin, neither was
guile found on his lips,15 but because of our sin. Therefore, just as
we died together with him when he died, so will we also rise together
with him…. After Jesus’ circumcision, the rite was abolished by the
introduction of baptism, of which circumcision was a type. For this
reason we are no longer circumcised. It seems to me that circumcision
achieved three distinct ends. In the first place, it separated the
descendants of Abraham by a sort of sign and seal and distinguished
them from all other nations. Second, it prefigured in itself the grace
and efficacy of divine baptism. Formerly a male who was circumcised
was included among the people of God by virtue of that seal; nowadays,
a person who is baptized and has formed in himself Christ the seal,
becomes a member of God’s adopted family.
(Arthur A. Just and Thomas C. Oden, eds. Luke. vol. 3 of Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture. ICCS/Accordance electronic ed.
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 44-45.)
