Illness and uncleanness, illness and sin, the connection between them: this is an old and disputed subject. Not so very long ago (by historical standards, of course), leprosy was considered not merely a contagious disease, but also an unclean one...
Illness and uncleanness, illness and sin, the connection between them: this is an old and disputed subject. Not so very long ago (by historical standards, of course), leprosy was considered not merely a contagious disease, but also an unclean and defiling one. People appealed precisely to the Book of Leviticus, because everything there is unambiguous. Meanwhile, both then and especially today, a natural question arises: why leprosy in particular?
Yes, leprosy is a contagious disease, but there are others no less dangerous: plague, for example, or smallpox, or cholera, or anthrax. All these diseases were known in antiquity, but for some reason it is leprosy that is especially singled out in the Book of Leviticus. If the problem is reduced only to medicine, to hygiene, to anti-epidemic measures, the question remains unanswered. What, then?
Cholera is a deadly disease, like plague and anthrax. They all kill a person, sometimes painfully, but always comparatively quickly. Often even today, if appropriate medical help is lacking. Death itself, however, in antiquity was not such a problem, as frightening as this may sound to the ear of our contemporary. In antiquity (and in the Middle Ages too) no one "revered life." People simply lived as God gave them to live. In their hour they rejoiced, in their hour they suffered, in their hour they were born, in their hour they died.
The one who wanted to get out of this circle searched for his own path; sometimes he found it, sometimes he did not. Emotions about the brevity of life, or the nearness of death, or anything else of that kind were considered excessive. People rejoiced in concrete joys, grieved concrete griefs, suffered from concrete sufferings, everything in its own time. What was considered truly terrible and senseless was not death, but life in dying.
So leprosy became a symbol precisely of something like that: life in dying. Roughly as cancer has become for us today, especially when it drags on long and painfully and does not end, though cancer was a great rarity in antiquity. Leprosy, however, was far more common than it is in our world today, and it was incurable. A person lived while dying, sometimes for decades, and the question involuntarily arose: why? To answer the question of human sinfulness in such a case is practically impossible, at least for a human being, but to state the fact of uncleanness is quite possible. And this was done, simply on the basis of fact. As everything was in those times.
13 Rules whereby the priest was to judge of the leprosy, Lev 13:1-44.
Directions concerning the leper, Lev 13:45-46.
Concerning the leprosy in garments, Lev 13:47-59.
13:2 In the skin - For there is the first seat of the leprosy, the bright spot shining like the scale of a fish, as it is in the beginning of a leprosy. The priest - The priest was to admit to, or exclude from, the sanctuary, and therefore to examine who were to be excluded.
13:3 When the hair is turned white - This change of colour was an evidence both of the abundance of excrementious humours, and of the weakness of nature, as we see in old and sick persons. His flesh - For the leprosy consumed both the skin and the flesh.
13:4 Seven days - For greater assurance; to teach ministers not to be hasty in their judgments, but diligently to search and examine all things before - hand. The plague is here put for the man that hath the plague.
13:6 Dark - Contrary to the white colour of the leprosy. But the word may be rendered, have contracted itself, and thus the opposition seems to be most clear as the spreading of itself. He shall wash his clothes - Though it was no leprosy, to teach us, that no sin is so small as not to need to be washed by the blood of Christ, which was the thing designed by all these washings.
13:10 White in the skin - With a preternatural and extraordinary whiteness. Raw flesh - This shewed it was not a superficial leprosy but one of a deeper and more malignant nature, that had eaten into the very flesh, for which cause it is in the next verse called an old or inveterate leprosy.
13:13 All his flesh - When it appeared in some one part it discovered the ill humour which lurked within, and withal the inability of nature to expel it; but when it overspread all, it manifested the strength of nature conquering the distemper, and purging out the ill humours into the outward parts.
13:14 In it - That is in the place where the appearance of leprosy was, when the flesh was partly changed into a whiter colour, and partly kept its natural colour, this variety of colours was an evidence of the leprosy, as one and the same colour continuing, was a sign of soundness.
13:15 The raw flesh - 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.
13:16 Unto white - As it is usual with sores, when they begin to be healed, the skin which is white, coming upon the flesh.
13:21 Dark - Or, and be contracted.
13:22 A plague - Or the plague of leprosy, of which he is speaking.
13:24 A hot burning - A burning of fire, by the touch of any hot - iron, or burning coals, which naturally makes an ulcer or sore in which the following spot is.
13:28 Of the burning - Arising from the burning mentioned, Lev 13:24.