Year 1, Day 102, Leviticus 13

More on Leprosy than We Could Hope

Leprosy is such a fun topic, no?  Actually, if you are like me you are wondering why Moses needed 59 verses this chapter when about 20 could have accomplished the task.  There seems to be a lot of repetition here in these verses.

Whenever that issue comes up, what we need to remember is that repetition usually denotes a place where something was extremely important in the culture.  When the repetition seems strange, it is due to the progress of science allowing this particular topic to become all but unimportant in our present culture. 

We don’t see the reason for all the minor case/sub-case arguments spoken of in this chapter because leprosy is not something we deal with all that often in the First World.  We don’t have to worry about distinguishing between an active case of leprosy, a recovered case of leprosy, leprosy in a garment made of animal hide, leprosy on the head, and so forth.  We don’t need to know all of those things because leprosy is all but done where we live.

Making a Modern Analogy

To spin the argument the other way, how many of us struggle between determining if something is a cold, the flu, an allergy attack, or some other type of sickness?  We commonly get colds, flus, allergy attacks, and sinus troubles and have difficulty telling the difference between them.  So we have very careful diagnostic tools to help us figure out what it is because the treatment for each of these afflictions is substantially different!  This is the same for leprosy in the time of the writing of Leviticus.

If nothing else, reading these words makes me glad I don’t have to deal with leprosy in America.  It is a horrible affliction of the skin that wasn’t very fun to deal with at all.  I’m very grateful that I can look at these rules in this chapter and be unfamiliar with why all these diagnostic tools are necessary.  I am grateful to live in a culture and society where I don’t have to fear catching leprosy as the people did fear it a millennium or two ago – and many still fear it in some places in this world.  There are things to thank God for today.

Function of the Priests

As we talk about these verses, we should recognize that the priests did not serve as doctors.  That is a common misconception that people have.  The priests diagnosed the disease and set up boundaries – even offered a spiritual intervention.  But they were not in charge of determining physical treatment for the disease.  They quarantined the afflicted and let the unafflicted participate in community without worry.

The best analogy for the priest in this role is the health department.  Today’s health department focuses on making sure the places people go are clean and not full of disease.  When they find uncleanliness, they shut it down to the public until such a point that cleanliness is restored.  They don’t clean it themselves or even tell people how to restore cleanliness.  They merely shut it down until the problem is resolved.  This is the role of the priest as well.

We shall hear about treatments in the next chapter.  Even there, realize that the priest was just the diagnostician and preserver of the communal health.  The priest was not the doctor.

The Role of Fire

Also, I think it is interesting that when we start dealing with garments and leprosy that there is one guaranteed method of purification: fire.  Isn’t it interesting that the only guaranteed method to destroy an infectious skin disease is to remove the infected area and burn it up.  Fire destroys infectious skin conditions.

Let’s let leprosy – infectious skin conditions – be an analogy for sin.  In the New Testament we often talk about ourselves in two terms: flesh and spirit {And sometimes we add a third category, soul.}  We talk about the flesh as the worldly portion that will be cast off and purified – and most often we talk about the purification as being done in fire.

That’s a pretty cool parallel to leprosy to me.  Sin is a leprosy of the human condition.  It is infectious like you can’t believe.  The only way for it to be truly taken care of is for God to remove our outer garments {the flesh} and refine them in fire until the leprosy of sin is destroyed.  This thought adds a layer of depth to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.

For the record, I had never thought about the fact that a cloak made of animal hide could get leprosy, but it makes total sense that it could!  That just adds a whole new dimension to  this idea of infectious skin diseases that I had never contemplated.

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