Leviticus 13:15

And the priest shall see the raw flesh,.... Or when he sees it, the person being brought to him to be viewed: and pronounce him to be unclean; or shall pronounce him to be unclean: [for] the raw

And the priest shall see him: and, behold, if the rising be white in the skin, and it have turned the hair white, and there be quick raw flesh in the rising; If the rising be white.

The raw flesh is unclean: this is repeated again and again, because raw or living flesh might rather seem a sign of soundness, and the priest might easily be deceived by it, and therefore he was more narrowly to look into it, and to observe the place and manner and other circumstances in which it appeared.

Leviticus 13:15 And the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be unclean: [for] the raw flesh [is] unclean: it [is] a leprosy.Ver. 15. It is a leprosy.] Properly so called; a fretting soreness or scabbedness. The Greeks call it Elephas, or Elephantiasis, when the skin grows hard as the elephant’ s skin. This the Israelites brought, likely, out of Egypt; for it was bred only about the Nile, and is therefore called the botch of Egypt.

(15) And the priest shall see the raw flesh.—Rather, the sound flesh. It will be seen that it is the sound flesh only, and not the white hair, which renders the patient unclean.

9–17. The first part of this section is obscure; most modern commentators explain Leviticus 13:9-11 as referring to another form of leprosy in which the rising described in Leviticus 13:10 appears without any of the premonitory symptoms of Lev 13:2; if in addition to the white hair (already mentioned in Leviticus 13:3) there is ‘quick raw flesh’ (Leviticus 13:10) in the rising, this is a sure sign of leprosy, and the man must be declared unclean at once without waiting for any further examination. By ‘quick raw flesh’ (Heb. ‘the rawness of raw flesh,’ or lit. ‘the quickness of quick flesh’) is understood an appearance like that of raw meat. The Heb. words for ‘raw flesh’ [bâsâr ḥ ?ay] are used of raw meat in 1 Samuel 2:15; Prof. Macalister describes it as ‘red granulation tissue’ (HDB. iii. 96a). The words ‘old leprosy’ must then mean a leprosy of long standing which has not manifested itself in the preliminary stages, but, when first noticed, shews this definite indication of the disease. It is possible that these verses may include the case when the first symptoms described in Leviticus 13:2 have been either unobserved or concealed. Another explanation of Lev 13:9-11 is that they describe a fresh outbreak in one who has been pronounced clean, or who has been cured of a previous attack. The traditional interpretation of ‘quick raw flesh’ (the quickening of living flesh, A. V. mg.) is ‘sound flesh.’ The appearance of this sound flesh in a rising was, in the opinion of the rabbis, evidence that an old leprosy had developed fresh activity. The words of Lev 13:7, ‘after that he hath shewn himself to the priest for his cleansing,’ are by some considered as referring to the third of the inspections prescribed in Leviticus 13:2-6. It has been observed that the suspected person at the first and second inspection must either be pronounced unclean, or shut up for further enquiry, and he cannot be pronounced clean till the third examination. Then Leviticus 13:7-8 would refer to the reappearance of leprous symptoms after a man had been pronounced clean by the priest, and Leviticus 13:9-11 would supply further rules for such cases.