Leviticus 13
Butler[THE text of Lev. 13 and 14 omitted, but the substance fully explained.]
No. 5 1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is unclean by the dead: both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camp, in the midst whereof I dwell. And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.
De. 24 8 Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. Remember what the LORD thy God did unto Miriam, by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt.
Ceremonial purifications, like the sacrifices, had an immediate efficacy, symbolizing that belonging to the change which they prefigured. The occasions of these ceremonial cleansings arose partly from the state of the body, under which head the leprosy may be included, and partly from external contact with dead bodies, or participation in the rites of burial. The purifying rites themselves were always partly sacrificial. The additional ceremonies consisted chiefly in sprinkling with water, either pure or mixed with the blood of the victim, or with its ashes, or with those of cedar-wood, scarlet wool, and hyssop, to which may be added the letting go of living birds on a particular occasion. The officiating person was required to be clean—that is, ceremonially undefiled, but not necessarily a priest. The best explanation is that these purifying rites were intended to keep constantly before the mind the idea of sin as a defilement, and the necessity of sanctification, just as the sacrifices rendered prominent the idea of guilt and the necessity of expiation. Thus the two great doctrines of atonement and sanctification were embodied in these two distinct but parallel systems of expiatory and ex-purgatory rites. All the cases are connected more or less with a natural feeling which adapted them to serve this purpose. It was not necessary for this end that they should all be immediately connected with actual sin. A leper, for example, might be a good man; but this only served to prevent misapprehension, and to show that the whole system was symbolical. . . . The entire system of ceremonial defilement and purification may be described as intended to keep constantly before the mind, by natural association no less than by arbitrary symbols, the loathsomeness of sin, the innate corruption of mankind, its hereditary propagation, its connection with the sufferings of life, and its tendency to death, both in the lowest and the highest sense; while the complication of these purifying rites with those of sacrifice perpetually taught the fundamental doctrine that without atonement moral renovation is impossible. All these were symbols, as distinguished from prophetic types, and as such suited to prepare the way for the Christian system, without confounding the two dispensations by an anticipation of the Gospel light amid the shadows of the Law. J. A. A.
“Uncleanness” was not the immediate consequence of deliberate wrong-doing, but, as far as the subject of it was concerned, it was so interwoven with the present constitution of things as to deserve the name of involuntary. To be unclean was to become defiled in the course of nature. . . . In the technical language of the Law, certain physical conditions rendered their subject “unclean.” The “unclean” were temporarily cut off from the theocratic privileges of the Israelite, whether priest or common person; but these privileges were restored upon the dutiful fulfilment of the rites of purification. Purification was effected either by water or by blood. Oave.
Of all the various sorts of ceremonial uncleanness, there is none which appears to have had so much a typical import as the case of leprosy, which accordingly is treated of with a niceness of distinction and a particularity of detail peculiar to itself. Not less than these two very long chapters are devoted to the ascertaining of the signs of this disease, and prescribing the method of its purification. R. Hall.—As disease generally is the fruit and evidence of sin, every form of disease might have been held to be polluting, and to have required separate purifications. This would have rendered the ceremonial observances an intolerable burden. One disease, therefore, was chosen in particular, and that such an one as could scarcely fail to appear a fit representation and most affecting symbol of sin. This disease was the leprosy (the white leprosy, as it is sometimes called, to distinguish it from other forms of the same malady). It is described with much minuteness by Moses, and various marks are given to distinguish it from others, which, though somewhat resembling it, yet did not possess its inveterate and virulent character. It began in the formation of certain spots upon the skin, small at first, but gradually increasing in dimensions; at their first appearance of a reddish color, but by and by presenting a white, scaly, shining aspect, attended by little pain, but incapable of being healed by any known remedy. Slowly, yet regularly, the spots continued to increase, till the whole body came to be overspread with them, and assumed the appearance of a white, dry, diseased, unwholesome scurf. But the corruption extended inwardly while it spread outwardly, and affected even the bones and marrow: the joints became first relaxed, then dislocated; fingers, toes, and even limbs dropped off; and the body at length fell to pieces, a loathsome mass of dissolution and decay. Such is the description of the disease given in Scripture, taken in connection with what is known of certain bodily disorders which still go by the name of leprosy. It was disease manifesting itself peculiarly in the form of corruption—a sort of living death. P. F.
Of all pollutions, that of leprosy is mentioned with especial detail—certainly not for the purpose of giving sanitary regulations, but by reference to this bodily evil to awaken an inward horror of sin, and its kingdom—death. From this way of viewing it arise the great care and minuteness with which this ailment was distinguished from all others of a similar kind. Gerl.—Several varieties of disease, more or less intimately connected with each other, were certainly included under the generic term tsara’ath, and some of these were contagious and some were not; and this fact seems to furnish the simplest explanation of most of the difficulties that beset the subject. For instance, the apparently paradoxical regulation that a man entirely covered with leprosy is to be pronounced “clean” (Lev. 13:12, 13). But the explanation is easy and satisfactory if we suppose that the “unclean” leprosy was simply one or more of the contagious species, and that the man who was pronounced “clean,” even when covered with a white eruption from head to foot, was one who might safely mix with his neighbors without any fear of communicating to them his disease. W. A. Greenhill.—As the prominent aim of the laws on this subject was to secure a fair and impartial decision of the main question, of the fact of the disease, Moses has not mentioned those signs of leprosy which admitted of no doubt, but those only which might be the subject of contention, and left it to the priests to distinguish between the really leprous and those who had only the appearance of being such. Bush.
Lev. 13:1-17. Symptoms to be Examined and Determined by the Priest (verses 18-44). Methods of Discriminating between Leprous Spots and Ulcers, Burns, Freckles, and Baldness.
His clothes shall be rent, the hair of his head shall go loose, he shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. He shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his dwelling be.
The leper was to carry about with him every mark of sorrow and distress, going with rent clothes, with bare [and dishevelled] head, with a bandage on the chin or lip; and when he saw any one approaching, was to give timely warning of his condition by crying out, “Unclean, unclean!” The only adequate reason that can be assigned for the manner in which leprosy was thus viewed and treated, was its fitness to serve as a symbol of sin, and of the treatment those who indulge in sin might expect at the hand of God. It was the visible sign and expression upon the living of what God thought and felt upon the subject. Hence, when he manifested his righteous severity toward particular persons, and testified his displeasure against their sins by the infliction of a bodily disease, it was in the visitation of leprosy that the judgment commonly took effect, as in the cases of Miriam, Uzziah, and Gehazi. Hence, also, Moses warned the people against incurring such a plague (De. 24:9); and when David besought the infliction of God’s judgment upon the house of Joab, leprosy was one of the forms in which he wished it might appear. So general was the feeling in this respect, that the leprous were proverbially called the smitten—i.e., the smitten of God; and from the Messiah being described in Isaiah as one smitten, certain Jewish interpreters inferred that he should be afflicted with leprosy. Viewing the disease thus, as a kind of visible image of sin inflicted by the hand of God on the living body, it is not difficult to understand how the leper especially should have been regarded as an object of defilement, as theocratically dead until he was recovered and purified. He was a sort of death in life, a walking sepulchre, as Spencer aptly designated him (sepulchrum ambulans), unfit while in such a state to draw near to the local habitation of God, or to have a place among the ranks of the living. And his exiled and separate condition, his disfigured dress, and lamentable appearance, while they proclaimed the sadness of his case, bore striking testimony at the same time to the holiness of God, and solemnly warned all who saw him to beware how they should offend against him. But these things are written also for our learning; and the malady, with its attendant evils, though but rarely visible to the bodily eye, speaks still to the ear of faith. It tells us of the insidious and growing nature of sin, spreading, if not arrested by the merciful interposition of God, from small beginnings to a universal corruption—of the inevitable exclusion which it brings when indulged in from the fellowship of God and the society of the blessed—of the deplorable and unhappy condition of those who are still subject to its sway—and of the competency of Divine grace alone to bring deliverance from the evil. P. F.
It is remarkable how well even the Jewish teachers themselves understood the symbolical meaning of this regulation; for thus speaks one of them on this place. “If a man considers this, he will be humbled and ashamed on account of his sin; since every sin is a leprosy, a spot upon his soul. And as it is written of the leper, his clothes shall be rent, etc.; in like manner the defilement on his soul, which is far removed from the holiness on high, shall equally separate him from the camp of Israel. And if a man turns to repentance in order to be cleansed from his spots, behold he is clean from his leprosy, but otherwise the leprosy remains clinging to his soul; and in this world and in the world to come he is far removed from the whole camp above until he has become cleansed.” The Law instructs how to know leprosy, pronounces the leper unclean, shuts him out from the congregation, but it has not power to heal him: this was reserved for the Son of God, to cleanse bodily in figure, and spiritually also as the true Redeemer from sin and its consequences. Gerl.
No clearer manifestation of his Divine power to the eyes of men in his day did Jesus give than his power to heal the lepers. It was like raising the dead. To turn the pale, loathsome, putrid leper to all the peaceful vigor and healthful joy of a little child’s life, was manifestly what none but God could do. The arm that could lift into life the moving corpse must be that arm only which could raise the putrid, smoldering carcase from the grave.
It was a most striking type of sin. As the pain of leprosy was not vehement, but kept the man restless and sad, so sin, in fallen man, may not be felt keenly, or he may not be conscious of it; but it is yet the cause of all his restlessness and sadness—the root of his unsatisfied desires. As the leprosy was corrosive, and penetrated almost unfelt and unseen till it had wasted away the substance of life from the several parts of the body, so sin in the soul eats out its spiritual life and beauty, while the sinner outwardly may seem “to live and move and have his being” as a creature of God. And as at last the disease of the leper bursts forth externally, and the man becomes a mere skeleton and a mass of loathsome corruption, so sin unchecked defaces more and more the image of God and every vestige of comeliness that was left. As the sure end of the leprosy is death, not less surely “the wages of sin is death.” It would seem, therefore, to have been a disease specially adapted to typifying sin in all its various features as no other disease could do. S. R.
The similarity of appearance presented by the two affections is enough to account for their going by the same name. Leprosy in garments and in leather is a mildew which cannot be got rid of, called leprosy by analogy. Like other causes of uncleanness, it makes the material unclean, because it gives a repulsive appearance to it, reminding the beholder of the disease which it resembles. F. M.—Leprosy in linen and woollen fabrics or clothes consisted in all probability in nothing but so-called mildew, which commonly arises from damp and want of air, and consists, in the case of linen, of round, partially colored spots, which spread and gradually eat up the fabric, until it falls to pieces like mould. In leather, the mildew consists more strictly of “holes eaten in,” and is of a greenish, reddish, or whitish color, according to the species of the delicate cryptogami by which it has been formed. Keil.
From passages of the Old Testament (Zech. 3 : 3-5 ; Is. 61 : 10) we find that clothing is connected with the idea of atonement, that God will not be approached except in holy garments, that foul garments typify iniquity, that garments which have contracted ceremonial uncleanness must be washed, that clean garments typify salvation and righteousness. From the New Testament we learn what are the materials of the robe of salvation. They are the righteousness of Christ imputed to man—such is the argument of the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle to the Galatians—and the righteousness inwrought in man by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost—“for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” If these form the materials of the Christian’s spiritual raiment, there will appear no leprosy or mildew either in warp or woof. F. M.
Leprosy in houses must be regarded from the same point of view as that of leprosy in clothes. The regulations respecting it are not sanitary laws, but rest upon an ideal or symbolical basis. The same thought is attached to all species of uncleanness. Something—it matters not what—produces a foul and repulsive appearance in the walls of a house. That is in itself sufficient to make that house unclean; for whatever is foul and repulsive is representative of moral and spiritual defilement, and therefore is itself symbolically defiling and defiled. F. M.
Michaelis observes that walls and houses are often attacked with something that corrodes and consumes them, and which is called by the Germans “saltpetre,” but which we will call “mural salt.” This mural incrustation, or efflorescence, chiefly appears in damp situations, in cellars and ground-floors, seldom extending to the upper stories of a house. The walls become mouldy, the plaster detaches itself from the wall, swells, and then falls off. The things that lie near the walls become damaged and in the end spoiled. If this “saltpetre” be strong in the occupied apartments, it is very injurious to health, particularly where people sleep near the wall. If such effects be experienced in modern Europe, there is room to conclude that they were more strongly exhibited at the early period under notice, and in countries where domestic architecture never attained much perfection, and where people generally live in houses having but one story. Taking this to be the “house-leprosy” of the Scriptures, the object of the Mosaic ordinance is sufficiently intelligible. Pict. Bib.
43-45. It was possible that notwithstanding all the precautions thus ordered to be taken, their efforts might still be unavailing, and the taint of leprosy disclose itself in the walls of the house. Where this was the case, the only remaining alternative was utterly to demolish the building, and cast away the materials as abhorred and polluted rubbish, into some place equally unclean and abominable. A leprosy house was not to be permitted to stand. The injury which such houses might do to the health of the inhabitants or to the articles they contained was of more consequence than the buildings themselves. Bush.
48-53. The ceremony of cleansing the house is as similar to that of cleansing the leper as circumstances will permit. In case there is no reappearance of the mischief after the new stones and plastering have been put in, the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed. First, the priest assures himself that the plague is healed, then he pronounces the house clean, and still after that the cleansing is to take place. The cleansing is effected by the same ceremony as that of the leper himself, by the two birds, and cedar-wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. F. M.
The surprising part which at first sight appears in this is that a sin-offering was to be made for the house as for the purification of a leprosy human being; but it leads again to the conclusion that every disorder which sin has caused among men—and leprosy was peculiarly regarded as such—should be covered by God’s means of healing, withdrawn from his sight, and so his grace again turned toward man. Gerl. —That the Divine Lawgiver should, in this tabernacle period of Israel’s history, anticipate a time when their future houses would be affected by some disorder similar to leprosy in the human skin, and that he should direct a treatment of such houses closely corresponding with that of the human leper, is exceedingly remarkable. Nothing could possibly impress the Hebrew mind more powerfully with the idea that “the face of the Lord was against” that spiritual evil of which leprosy was the chosen type. W. C.
We avoid places that are known to be fever-stricken. We are alarmed lest we bring ourselves within the influence of contagion. This is natural and justifiable. Is there no suggestion in such rational caution that there may be moral danger from moral contagion? Can a body emit pestilence and a soul dwell in all evil and riot in all wantonness without giving out an effluvium fatal to moral vigor and to spiritual health? They are the unwise and most reprehensible men who being afraid of a fever have no fear of a moral pestilence; who running away from fatal diseases, rush into companionships and actions which are positively steeped and saturated with moral pollution. A poor thing indeed that the hand has kept itself away from pollution and defilement if the mind has opened wide all the points of access to the influence of evil. There may be a chamber of imagery in the heart. A man may be utterly without offence in any social acceptance of that term—a friend of magistrates and judges, and himself a high interpreter of the law of social morality and honor, and yet all the while may be hiding a very perdition in his heart. It is the characteristic mystery of the salvation of Jesus Christ that it does not come to remove stains upon the flesh or spots upon the garments, but to work out an utter and eternal cleansing in the secret places of the soul, so that the heart itself may in the event be without “spot or wrinkle or any such thing”—pure, holy, radiant, fit to be looked upon by the very eye of God. J. P.
CEREMONIAL UNCLEANNESS AND PURIFICATION: WATER OF PURIFICATION FOR CONTACT WITH THE DEAD. CHILDBIRTH. BODILY ISSUES.