Thought for the Week:

In some ways, the immersion ritual represents death and resurrection. When a proselyte was converting to Judaism, he had to go through the immersion ritual. The Sages taught that his old, former Gentile-self died in the water and the proselyte emerged reborn as a Jew. Perhaps this is one reason John the Immerser employed immersion as the physical token of repentance. The penitent entering the water of the Jordan was dying to his or her sin and being reborn to a life of repentance and righteousness.

Commentary:

He shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and be clean. (Leviticus 14:9)

Before a cleansed leper could return to a state of levitical purity, he needed to go through a ritual immersion in water. The Hebrew word for a gathering of water suitable for ritual immersion is mikvah (מקוה).

Immersion into a mikvah is a standard ritual for most purification ceremonies in the Torah, not just for lepers. In the Greek, immersion into the mikvah was expressed with the Greek term baptisma, from which we derive the wor…