18-10. The Cleansing of the Leper

10. The Cleansing of the Leper Mat 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luk 5:12-16

It is said in one place that the Lord confirmed the word of his servants with signs following (Mark 16:20). Here He does the same for his own. His discourse upon the Mount is ended, and following close on that discourse, this and other of his most memorable miracles are performed. It is as though He would set his seal to all that He had there taught, would approve Himself a prophet, with right to speak in the language of authority which He has there held^[1] (Mat 7:29). That great revision of the moral code was scarcely ended, ere the opportunity occurred for thus solemnly confirming his word. As He was descending from the mountain, “there came a leper and worshipped Him,” one, in the language of St. Luke, “full of leprosy,” so that it was not a spot here and there, but the tetter had spread over his whole body; he was leprous from head to foot. This man had ventured, it may be, to linger on the outskirts of the listening crowd, and, undeterred by the severity of the closing sentences of Christ’s discourse, came now to claim the blessings promised at its opening to the suffering and the mourning. But we shall ill understand this miracle, unless first a few words have been said concerning leprosy in general, and the meaning of the uncleanness attached to it in the Levitical law. The medical details, the distinction between one kind of leprosy and another, as between the white λεύκη, which among the Jews was the most frequent, and the yet more terrible elephantiasis (thought by many to have been that with which Job was visited, and so named because in it the feet swelled to an elephantine size), would be here out of place. Only it will be necessary to correct a mistake, common to all writers who, like Michaelis, can see in the Levitical ordinances little more, for the most part, than regulations of police or of a board of health, or, at the highest, rules for the well ordering of an earthly society; who miss altogether a main purpose which these ordinances had—namely, that by them men might be trained into a sense of the cleaving taint which is theirs from birth, into a confession of impurity and of consequent separation from God, and thus into a longing after purity and re-union with Him. I refer to the mistaken assumption that leprosy was catching from one person to another; and that lepers were so carefully secluded from their fellow-men, lest they might communicate the poison of the disease to them; as, in like manner, that the torn garment, the covered lip, the cry “Unclean, unclean” (Lev 13:45), were warnings to all that they should keep aloof, lest unawares touching a leper, or drawing into too great a nearness, they should become partakers of his disease. So far from any danger of the kind existing, all who have looked closest into the matter agree that the sickness was incommunicable by (ordinary contact from one person to another. A leper might transmit it to his children,^[2] or the mother of a leper’s children might take it from him; but it was by no ordinary contact communicable from one person to another.

All the notices in the O. T., as well as in other Jewish books, confirm this assertion that we have here something very much higher than a mere sanitary regulation. Thus, where the law of Moses was not observed, no such exclusion necessarily found place; Naaman the leper commanded the armies of Syria (2Ki 5:1); Gehazi, with his leprosy that never should be cleansed, talked familiarly with the king of apostate Israel (2Ki 8:5). And even where the law of Moses was in force, the stranger and the sojourner were expressly exempted from the ordinances in relation to leprosy; which could not have been, had the disease been contagious, and the motives of the leper’s exclusion been not religious, but civil.^[3] How, moreover, should the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creeping infection, have ever themselves escaped it, obliged as they were by their very office to submit the leper to such actual handling and closest examination? Lightfoot can only explain this by supposing in their case a perpetual miracle. But there is no need of this. The ordinances concerning leprosy had another and far deeper significance, into which it will be needful a little to enter. It is clear that the same principle which made all having to do with death, as mourning, a grave, a corpse, the occasions of a ceremonial uncleanness, inasmuch as all these were signs and consequences of sin, might consistently with this have made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness, each of these being also death beginning, partial death—echoes in the body of that terrible reality, sin in the soul. But instead of this, in a gracious sparing of man, and not pushing the principle to’ the uttermost, God took but one sickness, one of these visible outcomings of a tainted nature, in which to testify that evil was not from Him, could not dwell with Him. He linked this teaching but with one; by his laws concerning it to train men into a sense of a clinging impurity, which needed a Pure and a Purifier to overcome and expel, and which nothing short of his taking of our flesh could drive out. And leprosy, the sickness of sicknesses, was through these Levitical ordinances selected of God from the whole host of maladies and diseases which had broken in upon man’s body. Bearing his testimony against it, He will bear his testimony against that out of which every sickness grows, against sin, as not from Him, as grievous in his sight; and against the sickness itself also as grievous, being as it was a visible manifestation, a direct consequence, of sin, a forerunner of that death, which by the portal of disobedience had found entrance into natures made for immortality. And terrible indeed, as might be expected, was that disease, round which this solemn teaching revolved. Leprosy was nothing short of a living death, a corrupting of all the humours, a poisoning of the very springs, of life; a dissolution little by little of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly describes the appearance which the leper presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, pleading for Miriam, he says, “Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s womb” (Num 12:12). The disease, moreover, was incurable by the art and skill of man;^[4] not that the leper might not return to health; for, however rare, such cases are contemplated in the Levitical law. But then the leprosy left the man, not in obedience to the skill of the physician, but purely and merely through the good will and mercy of God. This helplessness of man in the matter dictates the speech of Jehoram, who, when Naaman is sent to him, that he may heal him, exclaims, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?” (2Ki 5:7); as though the king of Syria had been seeking to fasten a quarrel upon him. The leper, thus fearfully bearing about in the body the outward and visible tokens of sin in the soul, was dealt with throughout as a sinner, as one in whom sin had reached its highest manifestation, as one dead in trespasses and sins. He was himself a dreadful parable of death. He bore about him the emblems of death (Lev 13:45); the rent garments, mourning for himself as one dead; the head bare, as they were wont to have it who were denied by communion with the dead (Num 6:9; Eze 24:17); and the lip covered (Eze 24:17^[5]). In the restoration, too, of a leper, precisely the same instruments of cleansing were in use, the cedar-wood, the hyssop, and scarlet, as were used for the cleansing of one rendered impure through a dead body, or aught pertaining to death, and which were never in use upon any other occasion (cf. Num 19:6; Num 19:13; Num 19:18 with Ley. xiv. 4-7). No doubt when David exclaims, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean” (Psa 51:7), looking through the outward to the inward, even to the true blood of sprinkling, he contemplates himself as a spiritual leper, one who had sinned a sin unto death, needing therefore to be restored to God from the very furthest degree of separation from Him. And being this sign and token of sin, and of sin reaching to and culminating in death, it naturally brought about with it a total exclusion from the camp or city of God. God is not a God of the dead; He has no fellowship with death, for death is the correlative of sin; but only of the living.. But the leper was as one dead, and as such was to be put out of the camp^[6] (Lev 13:46; Num 5:2-4; 2Ki 7:3), or afterwards out of the city.; and we find this law to have been so strictly enforced, that even the sister of Moses might not be exempted from it (Num 12:14-15); and kings themselves, as Uzziah (2Ch 26:21; 2Ki 15:5), must submit to it; men being by this exclusion taught that what here took place in a figure, should take place in the reality with every one who was found in the death of sin: he should be shut out of the true city of God. Thus, taking up and glorifying this and like ordinances of exclusion, St. John declares of the New Jerusalem, “There shall nowise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie” (Rev 21:27).

Nothing of all this, as need hardly be observed, in the least implied that the leper was a worse or guiltier man than his fellows; though being, as it was, this symbol of sin, it was most often the theocratic punishment, the penalty for offences committed against the theocracy, as those of Miriam, of Gehazi, of Uzziah;^[7] compare Deu 24:8, where the warning, “Take heed of the plague of leprosy,” is no admonition diligently to observe the laws about leprosy, but to have a care lest any disobedience of theirs should provoke God to visit them with this plague.^[8] The Jews themselves called it “the finger of God,” and emphatically, “the stroke.” It attacked, they said, first a man’s house; and then, if he refused to turn, his clothing; and lastly, should he persist in sin, himself:^[9]—a fine parable, let the fact have been as it might, of the manner in which God’s judgments, if a man refuse to listen to them, reach ever nearer to the centre of his life. So, too, they said that a man’s true repentance was the one condition of his leprosy leaving him.^[10]

Seeing then that leprosy was this outward and visible sign of the innermost spiritual corruption, this sacrament of death, on no fitter form of evil could the Lord of life show forth his power. He will thus prove Himself the conqueror of death in life, as elsewhere of death accomplished: and his victory over this most terrible form of physical evil is therefore fitly urged as a testimony of his Messiahship: “The lepers are cleansed” (Mat 11:5). Nor may we doubt that the terribleness of the infliction, the extreme suffering with which it was linked, the horror with which it must have filled the sufferer’s mind, as he marked its slow but inevitable progress, to be arrested by no human hand, the ghastly hideousness of its unnatural whiteness (Num 12:10; Exo 4:6,; 2Ki 5:27), must all have combined to draw out his pity,^[11] in whom love went hand in hand with power, the Physician and Healer of the bodies as of the souls of men. The leper with whom we now have to do, came “and worshipped” Jesus—an act of profound reverence, as from an inferior to a superior, yet not of necessity a recognition of a divine character in Him to whom this homage was offered. What he would have from the Lord he expresses in words which are remarkable as the utterance of a simple and humble faith, willing to abide the issue, whatever that may be; and having declared its desire, to leave the complying with it or not to a higher wisdom and love: “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.”^[12] There is no questioning here of the power; nothing of his unbelief who said, “If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). “And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him”^[13] ratifying and approving his utterance of faith, by making the concession of his request in the very words wherein the request itself had been embodied; “I will; be thou clean. ^[14] And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” This touching of the unclean by Christ is remarkable, seeing that such contact under the law would naturally be avoided, as causing a ceremonial defilement. The Gnostics, adversaries of the law, saw in this Christ’s contempt for its ordinances, a witness that He regarded it as coming not from the good God, but from the evil.^[15] Tertullian answers them well.^[16] He first shows what was the deeper meaning of forbidding to touch the ceremonially unclean, namely, that we should not defile our souls through partaking in other men’s sins; as St. Paul, transfiguring these ceremonial prohibitions into moral, exclaims, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing” (2Co 6:17). These outer prohibitions held good for all, till He came, the Pure, to whom all things were pure; who, incontaminable Himself, feared not the contamination of a touch; for in Him, first among men, the advancing tide of this world’s evil was effectually arrested and rolled back. Another would have defiled himself by touching the leper; but He, Himself remaining undefiled, cleansed him whom He touched; for in Him health overcame sickness,—and purity, defilement,—and life, death.

“And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man.” Ambrose and others see in this prohibition to divulge the cure a lesson of Christ to his followers that they also should avoid ostentation in the good which they do; lest, as he adds, they should be. themselves taken with a worse leprosy than any which they healed.^[17] I do not think so. If the motive was external, and not grounded on the inner moral condition of the man, it more probably was, lest his stiller ministry should be hindered by the untimely concourse of multitudes, drawn to Him by the hope of worldly benefits (which by this very occasion did occur, Mark 1:45); perhaps also by the premature violence of his enemies, roused to a more active hate by the fame of his mighty deeds (John 11:46-47 ^[18]). But, as already has been observed, the injunction to one that he should proclaim, to another that he should conceal, the great things which God had done for him, may have had a deeper motive, and have been grounded on the different moral conditions of the persons healed. Grotius and Bengel suggest very plausibly that the “See thou tell no man” here is to be taken with this limitation—”till thou hast done that which I enjoin thee.” He then proceeds to impart his injunction, “Go thy way, show thyself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded.” Till this was done, he should say nothing; lest, if a rumour of these things had gone before him, the priests at Jerusalem, out of envy, out of a desire to depreciate Christ’s work, might have denied that the man had ever been a leper, or else that he was now truly cleansed.^[19] We may perhaps in this way account for the notice of St. Mark, “He forthwith sent him away, ’’ or, put him forth;^[20] would allow no lingering, but required him to hasten on his errand, lest a report of the cure should outrun him that was cured.

“For a testimony unto them,” some understand “for a proof even to these gainsayers that I am come, not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, not to remove even a shadow, till I have brought in the substance in its room.^[21] These Levitical offerings I still allow and uphold, while as yet the better offering, to which they point, has not. been made. “^[22] We should understand the words rather, “for a testimony against them (cf. Mark 6:11; Luk 9:5); for a witness against their unbelief, who refuse to give credence to Me, even while I am legitimating my claims by such mighty works as these; works whose reality they have ratified themselves, accepting thy gift, re-admitting thee, as one truly cleansed, into the congregation”^[23] (John 5:36; John 15:24). For his going to the priest had this object, that the priest might ascertain if really his leprosy was cleansed (Lev 14:3), might, if so, accept his gift,^[24] and offer it as an atonement for him; and then, when all this was duly accomplished, pronounce him clean, and reinstate him in all his rights and privileges again.^[5]

Footnotes

[1] Jerome (in loc.): Recte post prædicationem atque doctrinam signorum offertur occasio, ut per virtutum miracula præteritus apud audientes sermo firmetur.

[2] See Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 359.

[3] See all this abundantly proved in pp. 1086-1089 of the learned dissertation by Rhenferd, De Leprâ Cutis Hebraeorum, in Meuschen, Nov. Test, ex Talm. Must. p. 1057; who concludes his disquisition on this part of the subject thus: Ex quibus, nisi nos omnia fallunt, certe concludimus, praecipuis Judaeorum magistris, traditionumque auctoribus nunquam in mentem incidisse ullam de leprae contagio suspicionera, omneraque hanc de contagiosâ leprâ sententiam plurimis antiquissimisque scriptoribus aeque ac Mosi plane fuisse incognitam. Compare the extract from Balsamon, in Suicer, Thes. s. v. λεπρόδ, where, speaking of the custom of the Eastern’ Church, he says, “They frequent our churches and eat with us, in nothing hindered by the disease. “In like manner there was a place for them, though a place apart, in the synagogues.

[4] Cyril of Alexandria calls it πάθος οὐκ ἰάσιμον.

[5] Spencer calls him well, sepulcrum ambulans; and Calvin: Pro mortuis habiti sunt, quos lepra a sacro caetu abdicabat. And when through the Crusades leprosy had been introduced into Western Europe, it was usual to clothe the leper in a shroud, and to say for him the masses for the dead.

[6] Herodotus (i. 138) mentions the same law. of exclusion as existing among the Persians, who accounted in like manner that leprosy was an especial visitation on account of especial sins.

[7] No doubt the strange apocryphal tradition of Judas Iscariot perishing by the long misery of a leprosy, in its most horrible form of elephantiasis, had this same origin (see Gfrörer, Die heilige Sage, vol. i. p. 179.

[8] See Rhenferd, Be Leprâ Cutis Hebraeorum, in Meuschen, N. T. ex Talm. illustr. p. 1082.

[9] Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, vol. iii. p. 191.

[10] Thus Jerome, following earlier Jewish expositors, explains "smitten of God" Isa 53:4) as=leprosus; and out of that passage and the general belief in leprosy as a νόσος θεήλατος, upgrew the old Jewish tradition of the Messiah being a leper (see Hengstenberg, Christologie, vol. i. p. 382).

[11] Cf. Mark 1:41, ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς σ π λ αγχνισθείς

[12] Yet the Romanists in vain endeavour to draw from this passage an approval of the timor diffidentiae in our prayers which have relation to the things of eternal life, such as the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Spirit. These we are to ask, assuredly believing that we have them. There is this uncertainty in the leper’s request, because he is asking a temporal benefit, which must always be asked, under conditions, and which may be refused, though to the faithful man the refusing is indeed a granting in a higher form (see Gerhard, Locc. Theoll. loc. 17, § 138).

[13] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 35): Quoniam ipse erat authenticus Pontifex Dei Patris, inspexit illos secundum Legis arcanum, significantis Christum esse verum disceptatorem et elimatorem humanarum macularum.

[14] Bengel: Echo prompta ad fidem leprosi maturam. Ipsa leprosi pratio continebat verba responsionis optatae.

[15] In Tertullian’s words (Adv. Marc. iv. 9): Ut aemulus Legis tetigit leprosum nihil faciens praeceptum legis, per contemptum inquinamenti.

[16] In Tertullian’s words (Adv. Marc. iv. 9): Non pigebit.... figuratae legis vim ostendere; quae in exemplo leprosi non contingendi, inimo ab omni commercio submovendi, communicationem prohibebat hominis delictis commaculati; cum qualibus et apostolus cibum quoque vetat sumere; participari enim stigmata delictorum, quasi ex contagione, si quis se cum peccatore miscuerit. Itaque Dominus volens altius intelligi Legem, per carnalia spiritalia significantem; et hoc nomine non destruens sed magis exstruens quam pertinentius volebat agnosci, tetigit leprosum, a quo etsi homo inquinari potuisset, Deus utique non inquinaretur, incontaminabilis scilicet. Ita non praescribetur illi quod debuerit legem observare, et non contigere immundum, quern contactus immundi non erat inquinaturus.He is not so successful in his interpretation of the spiritual significance, when elsewhere (Be Pud. 20) he goes into more details in the matter. So Calvin (in loc.): Ea est in Christo puritas, quae omnes sordes et inquinamenta absorbeat, neque se contamiriat leprosum tangendo, neque Legem transgreditur; and he beautifully finds in his stretching forth the hand’ and touching, a symbol of the Incarnation: Nec tamen quidquam inde maculae contraxit, sed integer manens, sordes omnes nostras exhausit, et nos perfudit suâ sanctitate. Compare H. de Sto, Victore: Lepram tetigit, et mundus permansit, quia veram humanitatis formam sumpsit, et culpam non contraxit.

[17] Exp. in Luk 5:5 : Sed ne lepra transire possit in medicum, unusquisque Dominicæ humilitatis exemplo jactantiam vitet. Cur enim præcipitur nemini dicere, nisi ut doceret non vulganda nostra beneficia, sed premenda? So Chrysostom: Ἀτύϕους ἡμᾶς παρασκευάζων καὶ ἀκενοδόξους.

[18] See a good note by Hammond on Mat 8:4. Calvin: Tanta erat vulgi opportunitas in flagitandis miraculis, ut non restaret doctrinse locus.

[19] Thus the Auct. Oper. Imperf. (Horn, xxi.): Ideo eum jubet offerre munera, ut si postmodum vellent eum expellere, diceret eis: Munera quasi a mundato suscepistis, et quomodo me quasi leprosum expellitis? Si leprosus adhuc fui, munera accipere non debuistis quasi a mundato: si autem mundus factus sum, repellere non debetis quasi leprosum.

[20] Ἐξέβαλεν αὐτόν.

[21] So Tertullian in his controversy with the Gnostics (Adv. Marc. iv. 9): Quantum enim ad gloriae humanae aversionem pertinebat, vetuit eum divulgare, quantum autem ad tutelam Legis, jussit ordinem impleri. Bengel: Ut testimonium illis exhibeatur, de Messiâ praesente, Legi non deroganti.

[22] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. qu. 3): Quia nondum esse coeperat sacrificium sanctum sanctorum, quod corpus ejus est.

[23] Maldonatus: Ut inexcusabiles essent sacerdotes, si in ipsum non crederent, cujus miracula probâssent. Witsius (De Mirac. Jesu, i. p. 32): Idcirco addidit Jesus haec a se ita juberi εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς, ne deinceps ullâ specie negari miraculum possit, et ut, dum eorum judicio approbatus, munus obtulisset, testimonium contra se haberent, impie se facere, quod Christo obluctarentur.

[24] Δῶρον is used for a bloody offering by the LXX, as Gen 4:4; Lev 1:2-3; Lev 1:10; cf. Heb 8:4, where the δῶρα=δῶρά τε καὶ θυσίας of the verse preceding, therefore also of ver. 1; cf. Mat 5:23. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 9) brings out too much the idea of a thank-offering in this gift of the cleansed leper, which properly it was not, though the words are admirable, applied to such: Argumenta enim figurata utpote prophetatae Legis adhuc in suis imaginibus tuebantur, qua, signilicabant hominem quondam peccatorem, verbo mox Dei emaculatum, offerre debere munus Deo apud templum, orationem scilicet et actionem gratiarum apud Ecclesiam, per Christum Jesum, catholicum Patris Sacerdotem.

[25] All the circumstances of the leper’s cleansing yielded themselves so aptly to the scheme of Church satisfactions, as it gradually shaped itself in the Middle Ages, that it is not to be wondered at that it was used at least as an illustration, often as an argument. Yet even then we find the great truth, of Christ the alone Cleanser, often brought out as the most prominent. Thus by Gratian (Be Poenitentiâ, dist. i.): Ut Dominus ostenderet quod non sacerdotali judicio, sed largitate divinae gratiae peccator emundatur, leprosum tangendo mundavit, et postea sacerdoti sacrificium ex lege offerre praecepit. Leprosus enim tangitur, cum respectu divinae pietatis mens peccatoris illustrata compungitur.....Leprosus semetipsum sacerdoti repraesentat, dum peccatum suum sacerdoti poenitens confitetur. Sacrificium ex lege offert, dum satisfactionem Ecclesiae judicio sibi impositam factis exsequitur. Sed antequam ad sacerdotem perveniat, emundatur, dum per contritionem cordis ante confessionem oris peccati veniâ indugetur. Cf. Pet. Lombard (Sent. iv. dist. 18): Dominus leprosum sanitate prius per se restituit, deinde ad sacerdotes misit, quorum judicio ostenderetur mundatus.....Quia etsi aliquis apud Deum sit solutus, non tamen in facie Ecclesiae solutus habetur, nisi per judicium sacerdotis. In solvendis ergo culpis vel retinendis ita operatur sacerdos evangelicus et judicat, sicut olim legalis in illis, qui contaminati erant leprâ, quae peccatum signat.