Leviticus 13:46-59

LEPROSY IN A GARMENT, Leviticus 13:47-59.

Moses proceeds to describe a leprous garment in the very words used to describe the leprosy in a man plague or stroke of leprosy. This has moved the mirth of some and the wonder of others. For it is evident that the garments of the leper are not intended. 1.) The method of purifying these is described in Leviticus 14:8. Leviticus 14:2.) The infection is described as visibly spreading in the garment. This is totally unlike “the garment spotted with the flesh.” 3.) It is subject to priestly inspection and condemnation before it is to be destroyed. 4.) No connexion of the leprous garment with a leprous wearer is hinted at. There must therefore be possible in garments something analogous to the loathsome leprosy in mankind. Here modern science comes to our aid in vindication of the accuracy of the Mosaic account. It is well known that there are some skin-diseases which originate in a genus of small spiders called acarus, embracing the mites and ticks, and other cutaneous disorders proceeding from a fungus. The analogy between the insect which frets the human skin and that which frets the garment is close enough for the proposes of the ceremonial law.

47. Woollen… or linen Garments composed of the wool of sheep or of flax were, according to Jewish canons, exposed to this ceremonial impurity. Silk, hemp, camel’s hair, and other substances are not liable to the plague. But mixed fabrics in which wool or flax predominates are capable of contracting this impurity.

48. Anything made of skin Dyed skins and garments are not rendered unclean by leprosy.

Warp or woof The vermin or animalculae may eat the threads of either, leaving the other untouched. Michaelis in his researches upon this subject found an intelligent woollen manufacturer in Germany who testified that when dead wool, or the wool of sheep which have died of disease, is used for either the warp or the woof, vermin are apt to establish themselves in it, particularly when it is worn close to the body and warmed thereby. The cloth woven of such wool not only becomes very soon bare, but first full of little depressions and then holes.

The Jews, from want of linen and from poverty, always wore woollen next the skin; hence their flesh was specially exposed to pollution from these infinitesimal insects of the moth genus. It has been suggested that the leprosy in linen is mildew, which spreads in partially coloured spots, till it gradually eats up the garment. In leather a delicate fungus or cryptogam eats holes under certain circumstances.

49. Greenish or reddish Moths by eating away the nap produce a slight discoloration, but mildew and rust cause spots of these colours.

51. A fretting leprosy Properly an inveterate or exasperated leprosy or corrosion.

55. It is unclean Here we observe that the spreading of the spot is not a required indication of uncleanness, but simply the continuance of the stain after washing and drying. Indelible rust or mildew would therefore render a garment unclean.

Fret inward Literally, it is a hollow in its back-baldness or in its front-baldness a depression of the front or back side of the cloth, caused by eating off the nap. This scrupulous care of garments was a part of that process by which the idea of spiritual purity was to be developed through physical purity. First, the natural, afterward the spiritual. 1 Corinthians 15:46. 1 Corinthians 15:4. ) The leprous garment is not treated as contagious, since washing would develop the infection. 5.) According to Jewish law a minor, a heathen, a proselyte, a leprous garment, and a leprous house of a non-Israelite, do not render unclean, nor does a bridegroom seized with leprosy defile any one during the first seven days of his marriage. 6.) Naaman, a leper, commanded the armies of Syria; Gehazi conversed with the king of Israel; and the leper in later times was not shut out from the synagogue nor from the Christian churches. We conclude, therefore, that the treatment of the leprosy prescribed by Moses was not sanitary, but ceremonial, like the separation and uncleanness of menstruous women, and other defilements under the Mosaic law as touching the dead, and having an issue, (Numbers 5:2,) the treatment of which had a far deeper reason than sanitary caution.

(3.) This view suggests the important question, Of what is the leprosy the type? It is not surprising that the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament, affords no direct answer, for there are some types, like some parables, whose spiritual import is so obvious that they need no further explanation. All minds instantly appreciate the intended moral lesson. It is enough for us to know that the principle is laid down in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the whole of the Jewish dispensation was typical a shadow of good things to come in the Gospel. Hence we are not to expect that every type in the Levitical ritual will be explained in detail, and that its antitype be indicated in express terms by the spirit of inspiration. The leprosy, the only disease which rendered a person unclean, is an impressive type of the great moral malady, sin. This plague corrupts and destroys the soul, excludes from the society of the holy, and banishes the incurable to the eternal pest-house of hell. For this the only cleansing is the blood of Jesus Christ, as typically set forth in the cleansing of the leper in the next chapter. Says Hengstenberg, “Every leper was a living sermon, a loud admonition to keep unspotted from the world. The exclusion of lepers from the camp, from the holy city, conveyed figuratively the same lesson as is done in the New Testament passages. See notes on Matthew 6:24; Colossians 3:5; Revelation 21:27; Ephesians 5:5. It is only when we take this view of the leprosy that we account for the fact that just this disease so frequently occurs as the theocratic punishment of sin. The image of sin is best suited for reflecting it; he who is a sinner before God is represented as a sinner in the eyes of man also by the circumstance that he must exhibit before men the image of sin. God took care that the image and the thing itself were perfectly coincident, although, no doubt, there were exceptions.”

Leprosy is a living death, poisoning all the springs and corrupting all the humours of life, dissolving little by little the whole body, so that limb actually falls away from limb through decay. Hence the leper is the type of one dead in sin; the emblems of his misery are the same as those of mourning for the dead; and the means of cleansing him are the same as those prescribed for one who has touched a corpse, and which were never used except on these two occasions. The penitent cry of David, after his deadly sins, “Purge me with hyssop,” (Psalms 51:7,) indicates a sense of utter spiritual defilement, faintly symbolized by the loathsome leprosy which was ceremonially cleansed with hyssop.

As the new-born children of leprous parents are often as pretty and as healthy in appearance as any others before the workings of the disease become visible in some of the signs described in this chapter, so the leprosy is a striking type of original or inborn depravity. If the sin principle in the sweetest babe is left unchecked by power divine he may unfold into a Nero, a Cesar Borgia, or a Robespierre.