Leviticus 13:1-7, 15:31
Regulations About Infectious Skin Deseases
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. The priest is to examine the sore on his skin, and if the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is an infectious skin disease. When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean. If the spot on his skin is white but does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest is to put the infected person in isolation for seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine him, and if he sees that the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin, he is to keep him in isolation another seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine him again, and if the sore has faded and has not spread in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is only a rash. The man must wash his clothes, and he will be clean. But if the rash does spread in his skin after he has shown himself to the priest to be pronounced clean, he must appear before the priest again.
“‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.’”
Mark 1:40–45
A Man With Leprosy
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
Clean and unclean
When I was a child, I lived in dread of catching leprosy. Each morning I would wake and look anxiously at my hands to see whether the tell-tale white spots of the disease had appeared. This continued for quite some time. The cause of this fear, I now realise, was our history lessons at school. We were studying the Victorians; the explorers and the missionaries who journeyed to Africa to establish leper colonies. Our teachers gave us rather graphic accounts of this terrible disease, and so, each morning, I trembled lest I should have contracted it. There is, I think, a lesson here: we must be careful what we place in the minds of young children.
In the Bible, however, the word translated as “leprosy” describes a variety of skin conditions. The symptoms mentioned in Scripture are not always consistent with the disease we now identify as leprosy. Indeed, it was not properly diagnosed until relatively recently. The afflicted person in those biblical accounts may have suffered from rashes, boils, or other skin infections. What mattered to the ancients was not medical diagnosis but ritual purity. To them, such symptoms signified uncleanness. The Hebrew word employed conveys the idea of being “stricken”, and, by implication, stricken by God, requiring cleansing.
The book of Leviticus is essentially a manual for the priests — the Levites — whose instructions came from God.
“The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting” (Leviticus 1:1, NIV)
and from Moses the instructions were passed to his brother Aaron and to the priests. There was no hierarchy beyond the priesthood. No kings, governors, or chiefs. God spoke through Moses, and all matters concerning ritual and worship passed through the priests, who guarded the sanctity of God’s dwelling.
At that stage in Israel’s history the people were wandering in the wilderness. The tabernacle — the tent of meeting — was the place where the divine presence rested. From there, ordinances and laws were communicated through the priests. The people were required to be ritually clean if they wished to draw near. Hence the many rituals and sacrifices recorded in Leviticus.
When we read these laws, the tone may appear restrictive or prohibitive. “The Lord said…” and “do not…”. Yet their purpose was that God might dwell amongst His chosen people in an ideal society. These rules reminded them how life ought to be lived. Every detail of their nomadic existence was set forth so that they might understand their relationship to God, and the goal of their journey: the promised land.
For such a task, God provided vivid imagery — almost visual aids — to teach both priests and people. And it was no small burden for the priests, who required a handbook to deal with the various situations that arose. Exodus records many murmurings; therefore the priests needed guidance to maintain order and holiness.
Who, then, was fit to approach God? The priests, certainly. And the people, provided they were not diseased or stricken. But who determined that? Not a physician, for there were no doctors in our sense of the word. Medicine was rudimentary, mixed with folklore, shamanism, and forms of magic. The first call for the stricken was the priest, guardian of God’s sanctuary. His concern was not treatment but cleansing. He certified a person either clean or unclean on the basis of visible symptoms (cf. Leviticus 13–14).
So the concern of these chapters is not cure but the spiritual and ritual welfare of the community. The family of the afflicted would bring the sufferer before the priest. To conceal the symptoms invited punishment; concealed cases, once discovered, might result in the entire family being declared unclean and placed outside the camp — a dreadful sentence of isolation, severed from relationships and routines.
The process of examination was meticulous: seven days of isolation, re-examination, perhaps a further seven days, before the sufferer might be declared clean and restored to the community (Leviticus 13:4–6). Chronic conditions were deemed unclean only whilst open and oozing; once healed, the sufferer could return. But those whose conditions were permanent and untreatable were condemned to live outside the camp, not because of their medical state but because of ritual impurity. They were required to change their appearance, wear rags, and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” (Leviticus 13:45–46).
Thus they were barred from worship, cut off from the covenant promises. The priests offered neither cure nor hope — their duty was to preserve an ideal society, guarding against anything that threatened the nation’s holiness. Uncleanness and sin were to be expelled.
In this we can discern a parable. A small blemish of sin may grow if not treated, deepening and spreading until conscience is dulled and we are estranged from God’s presence. Yet the sufferer was not morally worse than others; any person might fall ill. The issue was ritual, not moral corruption.
But what has this to do with us? We possess medicine, science, and psychology. We think less of spiritual cleansing and more of medical cure. Yet even in Jesus’s time the link between sickness and sin persisted. When the disciples encountered a blind man, they asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned… but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–3, NIV). Sickness was not a judgement.
By the time of Christ, purification laws had become burdensome, keeping the unclean perpetually from God. How could such people draw near? Jesus went beyond ritual cleansing. He touched the afflicted. He did not condemn but restored. He did not merely cleanse; He cured. A man with leprosy begged him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him (Mark 1:40–42, NIV).
The man was restored not only in body but in family, community, and worship.
“Come near,” Jesus seems to say. “Welcome. Let me make you clean.” The cleansed might then offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving (cf. Leviticus 14:10–20), yet the greater sacrifice is that of Calvary. There Christ bore our impurities and restored us from exile, that we should no longer dwell outside the camp but be brought into God’s presence.
As the hymn declares:
Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come. (Charlotte Elliott)