We have found a lot of ways to identify ourselves with the demands of the Old Covenant and even sometimes try to align ourselves with people who are in touch with evidence of the promises, but this is a fantasy that flies in the face of the great icon of faith, Abraham. We glibly say that we commit ourselves to the ten Commandments as the foundation of morality, and then we go on to add, according to our own evaluation, festivals, food restrictions, and golden rules. While many of the tenants in the Old Testament and under the old Covenant are accompanied with consequences or sanctions. The phases of life are by design, and so are the solutions of life’s problems.  Let us consider that the phasing out of the sunlight brings a clean slate to people who have become unclean under various rubrics of the Covenant, and discover whether we have phased out of the truth.

Sundown: the undisputed cleanser

There were several types of uncleanness that an Israelite in the camp under Moses might have experienced. I will list a few. Ancient Israel appears in sync with the easy solutions repeatedly.

• Touching certain animals
• Eating certain animals
• Bodily discharges
• Contact with a woman on her menses
• Contact with vessels or articles a menstruating touched
• Male ejaculation renders the involved male and female unclean
• A priest performing sacrifice is defiled via contact with blood

With respect to all of these categories of uncleanness, we find the use of water and  simply waiting for sundown ushered the defiled into the arena of clean again. Here is a typical scenario of the transition.

Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even. (Numbers 19:7)

Sundown! Everybody waits for you no more

Towards the end of the Tanakh, in Haggai, the prophet is prompted to ask priest a diagnostic question about the transfer of cleanness on uncleanness, and they fail miserably. They do not understand how the thing works.

Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. (Haggai 2:13) Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean. (Haggai 2:14)

Christians are not better off looking for miracles rather than waiting for sundown, and we are not justified in carrying guilt over external defilements (it makes no sense to ignore a bodily discharge) that require divine atonement.  Aligning with this mismanagement of the solutions we find ourselves phasing out the wrong things and majoring in minors.  As Jesus puts it, we find ourselves straining out tiny flies but swallowing camels. Surely there is enough sundown to deal with uncleanness.