Leviticus — Chapter 12

The purification of a woman after childbirth and the offering of a lamb or two turtledoves after forty or eighty days (depending on the sex of the child) is a legal ordinance that does not imply any sin in childbirth itself, Lapide insists against those who thought it did. Rather it signified the legal impurity of what pertains to the generation of the body, in contrast with the pure generation of the spirit. Our Lord Himself was presented in the Temple under this law (Luke 2:22), though He had no need of purification, thus fulfilling the Law for our sake.

The offering of the purified woman — a lamb for holocaust and a turtledove or pigeon for sin (Lev. 12:6-8) — was made by the Virgin Mary at the Presentation of the Lord (Luke 2:24). Lapide notes that she offered the lesser gift of the poor (two turtledoves), not from poverty of spirit but from humility and identification with the poor. Christ, the true holocaust, was thereby formally offered to the Father in the temple, fulfilling the figure from the very first days of His life.