Bathing

In the OT, bathing is mentioned primarily as a means of ritual purification (See PURITY). Various degrees of ritual impurity were removed by bathing, e.g. when a person had eaten carrion (Lev 17:15-16) or come into contact with a corpse (Num 19:19). Priests were particularly susceptible to impurity and a laver was placed in the tabernacle for them to wash their hands and feet on entering (Ex 30:18-21). On the Day of Atonement the high priest had to bathe himself frequently (Lev 16:24). The preparations for performing the priestly functions involved the washing of the hands and feet.

The most frequent form of ablution commanded in the OT involved the entire body: those requiring such immersion included the leper; prior to eating holy flesh; a person suffering from an unclean issue; anyone who had touched a menstruating woman, as well as the menstruating woman herself; and the priest tending the red heifer. Naaman was instructed to bathe seven times in the Jordan as a symbol of his purification from his skin disease (II Kgs 5:9ff), while Jesus told the blind man to bathe in the Pool of Siloam (John 9:11). Visitors arriving after a long journey were furnished with water to bathe their feet (Gen 18:4; 19:2; 24:32). It is recorded that David bathed himself at the end of a period of mourning (II Sam 12:20). The Jewish custom was to wash the hands before meals but Jesus absolved his disciples from this requirement, for which he was criticized by the Pharisees; his response was to stress the cleanliness of the heart (Mark chap. 7).

The normal dwelling rarely possessed bathing facilities and only the better houses had a special chamber with a tub used as a bath. A shallow clay bowl with a raised ridge in the middle was used for washing the feet.

Public baths were not built until the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. The earliest bath in Palestine was uncovered at Tel Anafa and is of Hellenistic date. Additional early baths were those built by Herod the Great at Masada and at Herodium in the late 1st century B.C., which were constructed on a regular Roman plan and comprised: the apodyterium,a room in which discarded clothes were kept in built-in cupboards; a frigidarium,a cold bath in which the bather was expected to cleanse himself before passing into the other parts of the bath; the tepidarium, a tepid bath, usually in the form of a shallow pool faced with water resistant plaster where the bather would warm himself before proceeding; the caldarium, a hot bath, which sometimes consisted of more than one room, one of which contained bathing tubs built of bricks and faced with plaster or marble, and another in which a steam-bath was taken.

The floors of the more luxurious bathhouses were paved with mosaics and the walls decorated with wall paintings . The public bath became a social institution and baths built in this way have been found throughout Palestine, even in regions where water was scarce. Another kind of bath was built near or above hot springs thought to have medicinal properties, e.g. in Hamath Tiberias and Hamath Gader.