(7) Who shall offer it.--Better, and he shall offer it, that is, the priest shall offer the sin offering. Though two sacrifices were brought--a burnt offering and a sin offering--yet stress is laid on the sin offering, for on it depended the purification and atonement of the mother. Even if the mother gave birth to twins, the administrators of the law during the second Temple decided that the one sin offering here prescribed sufficed.

12:1-8 Ceremonial purification. - After the laws concerning clean and unclean food, come the laws concerning clean and unclean persons. Man imparts his depraved nature to his offspring, so that, excepting as the atonement of Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit prevent, the original blessing, Increase and multiply, Ge 1:28, is become to the fallen race a direful curse, and communicates sin and misery. Let those women who have received mercy from God in child-bearing, with all thankfulness own God's goodness to them; and this shall please the Lord better than sacrifices.Who shall offer it before the Lord,.... Upon the altar of burnt offering:

and make an atonement for her; for whatsoever sin in connection with or that attended childbearing; as typical of the atonement by Christ both for sin original and actual:

and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood; in a ceremonial sense, and according to that law be pure and clean:

this is the law for her that hath born a male or a female; enjoined her, and to be observed by her; and though now with the rest of the ceremonial law it is abolished, yet it has this instruction in it; that it becomes women in such circumstances to bring the freewill offerings of their lips, their sacrifices of praise, and in a public manner signify their gratitude and thankfulness for the mercy and goodness of God vouchsafed to them, in carrying them through the whole time of childbearing, and saving them in the perilous hour.