Eight verses on purification after childbirth, and they contain an asymmetry the text never explains. After a son: seven days unclean, then thirty-three of purification. After a daughter: fourteen, then sixty-six — exactly double. Every account of why is supplied from outside the chapter, and the confident ones in both directions go past the evidence. Two things the text does say are worth holding: the closing offering is identical for a son and a daughter, and this is impurity rather than sin — bearing children is commanded in Genesis, and nothing here suggests wrongdoing. The chapter ends with the concession Luke would quote a thousand years later: if she cannot afford a lamb, two birds.