By Sword and Fire

A. Buckler summarizes the evidence for what he describes as “non-Levitical” defilements in the book of Leviticus (Studies in Sin and Atonement, 269):

“In Jeremiah and Ezekiel idolatry defiled the land of God, and in Leviticus all the enormities of the Canaanites defiled the country and would have the same effect, if and when practised by Israel. Idolatry and its abominations made any land of Gentiles unclean; bloodshed contaminated the land of Israel. The Canaanite enormities defiled their perpetrators, even Israelites, whom also the worship of idols made unclean, as already Hosea emphasized in his representation of idolatry as whoredom. Guilty immoral relations defiled not only the woman, but also the man; and the re-marriage of the divorced wife after she lost her second husband by death or divorce polluted the land of Israel. Also to let the criminal who after his execution, for additional punishment, was hanged on a tree, hand over night defiled the land.” In all these cases, “sin is represented figuratively as filth on the body or on the  clothes, and in Isaiah and Jeremiah sinners washed themselves from their sins symbolically.”

But the reality was that these defilements would not be removed from rites of washing or by sacrificial procedures: “God cleansed Israel from its grave sins by severe visitations and purified the Israelites symbolically from their grave sins by washing and refining, or by sprinkling on them clean water, not water levically purifying.”

This means in practice that “non-Levitical” impurities were removed by invading armies that swept away idols, slaughtered people, burned cities. But this too was a sort of divine sacrificial procedure. Joshua and the tribes of Israel purged the land originally with the sacrificial tools of sword and fire (Joshua 11:11; Judges 1:8), and the prophets warn of sword-and-fire judgments (Isaiah 66:16; Ezekiel 5:2; 23:25, 47). 

Yahweh Himself is a consuming fire; He takes up a sword, and purges Israel as if it were a great altar of earth.