Principles for Sanitation
Deuteronomy 23:12–13 (NASB95)
12 “You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there,
13 and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement.
It is amazing that God gave these instructions to Moses (who recorded them in the Torah) thousands of years before the invention of the microscope. God already gave instructions about what is clean and unclean thousands of years before we had the technology to confirm what the bible said is true. Today it is common knowledge that you are not to defecate in your drinking water and should wash your hands before eating. But at the time these instructions were given – humans had no idea about what made them sick. It is said that the average human lifespan during the dark ages was only about 32-years old. People were dying due to sanitation problems and lack of hygiene which caused diseases and parasites to be rife among them. These factors shortened their lifespan considerably.
Just digging a hole and covering the excrement would stop the spread of hookworm disease and keep flies from carrying bacteria and disease into the homes of the people by crawling on food and contaminating it.
See the link “Touch Not Laws” for more details.
Application: When building our refuge system, we will integrate our waste management system based upon biblical principles of sanitation. Livestock and human waste can be used to generate methane gas. Methane gas can be used to produce hot water to be used in various household or industrial applications.