Leprosy - Leviticus 13

Chapter 13 is long, but covers how the priests were to deal with those who had skin diseases. The word “leprosy” is used throughout this chapter but TB says that this is a mistranslation. He says that the actual Hebrew word used is “tzara’at” which was more accurately translated to mean just abnormal skin conditions in general. We’ve covered pretty in depth here what leprosy really was and the nature of it. As far as I can remember, 95% of the human population is naturally immune to leprosy and of those 5% who can contract it, it is not a very contagious disease. There are 4 types, the first two are the most common and resolve themselves within a year. The last two types are the ones more commonly thought of when the word leprosy is heard which is the disfigurement and all that and they too can resolve themselves, that’s why the Israelites had a process in place for people who had their leprosy resolve to come back into society through showing themselves to the priests. And it’s a bacterial infection so now people just take antibiotics and are fine afterward.

The concept of “leprosy” is so scary to people throughout human history because it can be so bad, so for the most part, it wasn’t as common anciently as we’ve been led to believe. TB himself even says that leprosy infections were incredibly rare, citing that in all the mummies exhumed from ancient Egypt, there’s no sign that leprosy was in their community at all and that while there is some record to leprosy being had among other populations such as Israel, it was incredibly uncommon. Still, because of the serious nature of the disease, protocols were put into place to protect the general population.

The content of chapter 13 consists of descriptions of different skin ailments and how they present and then what to do with the people presenting them. If there’s a sore in which the hair in the sore turns white and it’s deep, then it’s for sure leprosy and they have to be taken outside of the camp. There are some other presentations but I’m not going to go into them here because I ultimately think that it doesn’t matter. But the overview is that if it is for sure leprosy or a serious skin condition, the person is removed from society. If the priest is unsure or is the condition is abniguous, then the person quarantines for 7 days then is checked again. If they symptoms have improved then they can go home, if the symptoms have gotten worse but not too bad then it’s quarantine for another 7 days. If they symptoms have improved then they can go home, but if they haven’t then they have to be sent outside of the camp.

The interesting aspects of this chapter are the presumption that if someone is suffering with a serious skin condition, the people believed that this was caused by some secret inward sin. The people were afflicted physically because of wickedness internally. This is an interesting concept to me because it makes no sense. I just imagine someone having a skin condition and praying for forgiveness of sins and begging God to make it go away so they can be forgiven and go home but they have no control over the healing process of their skin. I’d imagine that being shunned by society for being diseased is bad enough, but then factor in the shame of being shunned because they believe that you are immoral person would be horrible. And TB points out that there is a sacrifice that we talked about previously that is just for people who think that they have lost favor with God but they don’t know why. Between that “I feel like I’ve done something wrong but I don’t know what it is,” and being blamed for your physical conditions. I’ve lived my life that way for a long time, not knowing what I did to deserve the bad things that happened to me and not knowing how I could remedy it, it’s a very painful and unproductive way to live life.

TB also pointed out that being pronounced “unclean” and sent to live outside of the group would guarantee poverty to the family of a man who was sent away, and removing the mother would be devastating to any family and especially the children. It would be like being excommunicated and sent to live in a tent in the desert alone for having eczema. There is a way to be welcomed back into the community once the condition had healed but still pretty devastating.

In addition to what happens when people have skin conditions, there is a bit about what to do with clothing that had touched those with skin conditions and also if clothes state to discolor spontaneously. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to part with their clothes because they were much harder to come by back then, but if they had touched sores or people who were considered “unclean” then there was a whole way to tell if the clothes had to be destroyed or just washed.