Hemorrhage

The category gathers two strands: the legal handling of a blood discharge in Leviticus, and the gospel narrative of a woman healed of a twelve-year flow.

Menstruation in the law

Leviticus regulates the ordinary discharge as a matter of ritual purity rather than illness: "And if a woman has a [genital] discharge, [and] her discharge in her flesh is blood, she will be in her impurity seven days: and whoever touches her will be unclean until the evening" (Lev 15:19). The blood itself is not condemned; the period of impurity simply restricts contact for seven days.

The woman with the twelve-year discharge

Two gospels describe a woman whose flow had continued for twelve years. Mark gives the fullest account: "And a woman, who had a discharge of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and had not been getting better, but rather grew worse, having heard about Jesus, came in the crowd behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I touch but his garments, I will be made whole. And immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her plague" (Mark 5:25-29). Luke's parallel notes the same chronicity and the same exhaustion of medical resources: "And a woman having a discharge of blood twelve years, who had spent all her living on physicians, unable to be healed by anyone" (Luke 8:43).

The healing reverses what Leviticus 15 framed as long-term impurity: where the law marked her unclean for years, contact with Jesus closes the discharge instantly.