Charles Ellicott Commentary Leviticus 15:13

"And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes; and he shall bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean." — Leviticus 15:13 (ASV)

And when he ... is cleansed of his issue. —That is, recovered from his infirmity or healed of it , as the real purification was not accomplished until he had performed the ritual prescribed in this and the two following verses. He is, however, not to perform these rites as soon as he finds that the issue has ceased, but has to wait seven clear days to allow sufficient time to ascertain whether the infirmity had actually disappeared. If any vestige of it was seen during these seven days, or even at the end of the seventh day, and after he was baptized, he had again to count seven other days.

Bathe his flesh in running water. —Or, more literally, living water. It will be seen that while all other defiled persons and things were to be immersed in a collection of water, the restored man who had suffered from the issue in question was ordered to bathe in a fountain or in spring water. For the phrase living water, see Leviticus 14:5; Leviticus 14:50. It is more than probable that the term “flesh” here also has the euphemistic sense in which it has previously been used in this section (Leviticus 15:7).

This interpretation—that “flesh” is used euphemistically—is supported by the fact that whenever bathing of the body is ordered, the phrase used for it throughout this section is uniformly just “bathe in water.” This phrase occurs at least ten times (Leviticus 15:5–8; Leviticus 15:10–11; Leviticus 15:18; Leviticus 15:21–22; Leviticus 15:27), and in all these instances, the Authorized Version has inserted himself in italics.

Moreover, this view is further confirmed by the fact that in the only passage in this section where the expression “flesh” is used in its literal sense for “body” , the sacred writer deliberately added (ĕth kol) “all,” so that this literal usage might be distinguished from the euphemistic sense in which “flesh” is used in all the other passages in this section.

This euphemistic use of “flesh,” however, would not exclude the bathing of the body as well, but, on the contrary, presupposes it.