Leviticus 13

The beginning of health is to know the disease,’’

wrote the Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, and every physician would agree with him. After all, how can you prescribe effectively if you don’t diagnose accurately?

These three chapters in Leviticus deal with bodily infirmities of one kind or another, because God was concerned about His people’s physical welfare. He cared for their needs during their wilderness march (Deut. 29:5) and, if they obeyed Him, He promised to shield them from the diseases they’d seen in Egypt (Ex. 15:26; Deut. 7:12–15). While it’s true that our greatest needs are spiritual, God still has the physical well-being of His people at heart.

The Hebrew word translated leprosy in Leviticus 14—15 includes various skin diseases and even mildew (13:47ff.; 14:33ff.). But there’s more to these chapters than simply a description of symptoms and ceremonies. In Scripture, disease is one of the images of sin (Ps. 147:3; Isa. 1:5–6; Jer. 8:2; 30:12; Mark 2:17). Thus as we study these chapters, we can learn what sin is like and how God wants us to deal with it. We must look beyond Moses to Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, who was wounded that we might be healed (Isa. 53:5). These three chapters illustrate three topics that are vitally related to the life of holiness: sin (Lev. 13), salvation (chap. 14), and sanctity (chap. 15).

Sin (13:1–46; 14:1–32) Since infection made a person ceremonially unclean, God appointed the priests to act as His examiners to determine whether the victim was “unclean’’ and therefore had to be separated from the rest of the camp. The person being examined could be isolated for as long as two weeks to give the disease a chance to change for better or for worse. The symptoms might involve swelling and a rash (13:1–8); swelling, whiteness, and raw flesh (vv. 9–17); boils (vv. 18–23); burns (vv. 24–28); and various skin eruptions (vv. 29–44). Not everything that looked like leprosy actually was leprosy, and it would be cruel to isolate somebody who wasn’t actually infected.

Note also that the investigation included not only persons (vv. 1–46), but also clothing (vv. 47–59) and even houses (14:33–57). Here the priest was looking for a mildew or fungus that, if allowed to spread, could do serious damage. Once Israel was in their land, these fungi could even destroy their crops (Deut. 28:22; Amos 4:9).

Since disease is an illustration of sin in the Bible, as you read these verses, you will learn a great deal about the “symptoms’’ of sin.

Sin is “deeper than the skin’’ (13:3–4, 25, 30–32, 34). “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’’ (Jer. 17:9). The word translated “wicked’’ in this verse means “sick’’; the niv translates it “beyond cure.’’ Sin is not a surface problem that can be solved with simple remedies, like trying to cure cancer with hand lotion. Sin comes from within, from fallen human nature; unless the heart is changed, there can be no solving of the sin problem. “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells’’ (Rom. 7: nkjv). Those who talk about the “innate goodness of man’’ know neither the Bible nor their own hearts.

In eighteenth-century England, if you were convicted for stealing, the judge could order the authorities to chop off your right hand. If you were convicted a second time, they could cut off the left hand. I recall reading about a pickpocket who lost both hands but managed to succeed in his career because he perfected picking pockets with his teeth! Even if the authorities had pulled all his teeth, it wouldn’t have solved the problem, because sin is deeper than the skin. Jesus said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man’’ (Matt. 15:19–20).

In Jeremiah’s day, the false prophets were like physicians who lied to their patients and refused to give them bad news. “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace’’ (Jer. 6:14). The medical profession today would discipline a doctor who did that, but the practice is perfectly acceptable for humanistic counselors, liberal preachers and professors, politicians, and newspaper columnists. People still believe the “progress myth’’ that people are good and are making themselves and the world better and better day by day.

Sin spreads (13:5–8, 22–23, 27–28, 32, 34–36, 51, 53, 55, 57; 14:39, 44, 48). True leprosy (“Hansen’s disease’’) affects the skin and the nerve endings; as it spreads, it produces nodules and ulcers. The tissues then contract and the limbs become deformed. What begins as one sore gradually spreads and turns the whole body into a mass of corruption and ugliness. How like sin! “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death’’ (James 1: nkjv).

Our first parents were thieves. Their son Cain was a liar and a murderer. From that small beginning, sin spread so as to corrupt and enslave the whole human race. By the time God sent the flood, the earth was filled with wickedness, evil, violence, and corruption (Gen. 6:5, 11–13), and things haven’t become any better since then. Scientific progress has made life more comfortable, but it hasn’t made the world less corrupt. “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores’’ (Isa. 1:5–6 nkjv).

For nearly fifty years, Alexander Whyte preached God’s Word at Free St. George’s Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, and gained a reputation for exposing the sins of the human heart and bringing them under the scrutiny of the Word of God. “Surgical preaching’’ people called it. At one time, he had an assistant named Hugh Black who preached at the evening service and was much more liberal and optimistic in his message. The congregation said they were blackened by Whyte on Sunday mornings and whitewashed by Black on Sunday evenings!

But when the church has a superficial view of sin, this attitude affects everything the church believes and does. If men and women are basically good and not sinners under the wrath of God, then why preach the gospel? Why send out missionaries? For that matter, why did Jesus even die on the cross? If people are good, then what they need is counseling and consoling, not convicting; we should give them encouragement, not evangelism.

Sin defiles (vv. 44–46). The word “unclean’’ is used fifty-four times in Leviticus 13—15. It describes the ceremonial defilement that makes the victim unfit for social life or for participation in worship at the house of God. The prophet Isaiah confessed that he was “a man of unclean lips’’ (Isa. 6:5), and then he spoke for all of us when he wrote, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’’ (64:6). Whatever sin touches, it defiles; only the blood of Jesus Christ can wash away that defilement (1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 1:5).

When you read Psalm 51, David’s prayer of confession, you can’t help but notice how his sins defiled every part of his being: his eyes (v. 3), his mind (v. 6), his ears (v. 8), his bones (v. 8), his heart (v. 10), and his mouth (vv. 13–15). His hands were stained with Uriah’s blood (v. 14), and all he could do was throw himself on the mercy of God and cry out, “Wash me’’ (vv. 2. 7).

Sin isolates (v. 46). What solemn words: “He is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.’’ He had to tear his clothes, put a covering on his upper lip, cry “Unclean, unclean!’’ whenever anybody approached him, and remain outside the camp until either he died or was healed. “Free among the dead’’ is the way Heman described it in Psalm 88:5. God struck King Azariah (Uzziah) with leprosy, and he had to dwell in a “separate house,’’ literally “a free house,’’ which was isolated from everybody else (2 Kings 15: niv). He was free— among the dead!

If you’ve done any witnessing, you’ve probably met people who seem to have no concept of the tragedy of sin and the awfulness of hell. “I don’t mind going to hell,’’ they say rather flippantly. “I’ll have lots of company.’’ But there is no company in hell, because hell is a place of eternal isolation and loneliness. Like the lepers outside the camp, lost sinners will dwell alone; they will be alone forever.

Sin is fit only for the fire (vv. 52, 55, 57). A defiled garment was to be burned in the fire; it was not to be purified but destroyed. When Jesus spoke about hell, He used the word gehenna, which referred to the garbage dump outside Jerusalem “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’’ (Mark 9:44; see Isa. 66:24). Hell is God’s eternal garbage dump prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41) and for those who follow the devil by rejecting Jesus Christ. It’s a lake of fire (Rev. 19:20; 21:10, 14–15) where Satan and his associates will suffer forever along with people whose names were not found in the Book of Life because they hadn’t trusted Jesus Christ and been born again into God’s family.

The consequences of leprosy were temporal, but the consequences of sin are eternal. The Jews knew no cure for leprosy, but there is a remedy for sin—faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Have you trusted Him? If you have, are you telling others the good news that they don’t have to be lepers and live forever in the fiery garbage dump of hell?

Salvation (Lev. 14:1–32) I find it discouraging to read chapter 13, with its emphasis on uncleanness and isolation. But chapter 14 brings us that happy ray of hope that we need: A leper can be cleansed and restored! We need the bad news of judgment before we can appreciate the good news of salvation.

The Jews had no cure for leprosy. Thus, if the victim became well, it was a gift of God’s mercy and grace. “And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet,’’ said Jesus, “and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian’’ (Luke 4:27). “Salvation is of the Lord’’ (Jonah 2:9). If we aren’t saved by God’s grace, then we aren’t saved at all, for nobody deserves to be saved.

The steps in the leper’s cleansing and restoration picture to us what Jesus Christ has done for sinners.

The priest goes to the leper (vv. 1–3). Since the unclean leper wasn’t permitted to enter the camp, the priest had to go outside the camp to minister to him or her. “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost’’ (Luke 19:10). When He ministered here on earth, Jesus was called “a friend of publicans and sinners’’ (Luke 7:34); He compared Himself to a doctor helping his needy patients (Matt. 9:10–13). As God’s Great Physician, Jesus makes “house calls’’ and comes to sinners right where they are. In the case of the Jewish leper, the priest went out to investigate and determine if indeed the victim was healed, but Jesus comes to us that He might heal us of the sickness of sin.

The victim offers the two birds (vv. 4–7). This unusual ritual pictures to us what Christ did to save a lost world. Birds don’t belong in clay jars; they belong in the heavens. Jesus came down from heaven and became a man (John 3:13, 31; 6:38, 42). As it were, He put Himself into a clay jar so that He might die for our sins. The running water over which the bird was killed reminds us of the Holy Spirit of God (John 7:37–39), for Jesus offered Himself to God “through the eternal Spirit’’ (Heb. 9:14). When the blood-stained living bird was turned loose, it pictured our Lord’s resurrection, for the resurrection of Christ is as much a part of the gospel message as is His death (1 Cor. 15:1–4). Only a living Savior can save dead sinners.

The blood of the bird that was sacrificed was in the jar and on the living bird, but it also had to be applied to the healed leper. Using the hyssop (Ex. 12:22; Ps. 51:7), the priest sprinkled the blood on the leper seven times and then pronounced the leper clean. “Without shedding of blood is no remission’’ (Heb. 9:22). How did the victim know he was clean? The priest told him so! How do believers today know that God has saved us? He tells us so in His Word! No matter how the leper felt or what he looked like, God said he was clean, and that settled it.

The person cleanses himself (vv. 8–9). On the day of his cleansing, he had to wash himself and his garments and shave off all his hair. He was then permitted to enter the camp, but he wasn’t allowed to enter his tent. He had to stay outside for another week.

Why wash when the priest had already pronounced him clean? Because he had to apply personally what God said was true positionally. The man was ceremonially clean and had the right to live in the camp, but he needed to be made personally and practically clean so he would be fit to live in the camp. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean’’ (Isa. 1: nkjv). “Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God’’ (2 Cor. 7:1). Perhaps Paul had Leviticus 14 in mind when he compared the new life in Christ to a change of clothes (Col. 3:1–14).

The person cleanses himself again (v. 9). This takes place a week later. The man had to wash, shave his body again, and put on clean clothes. The dual shaving left his skin like that of a baby, perhaps symbolizing a new birth. The shaving and washing didn’t kill the germs of leprosy—God had done that—but they symbolized the newness of life that had come to the former leper.

The person offered the required sacrifices (vv. 10–32). It’s now the eighth day since the priest first visited the leper, and eight is the number of the new beginning. The cleansed leper must bring to the door of the tabernacle a male lamb for a trespass (guilt) offering, a male lamb for a burnt offering, a ewe lamb for a sin offering, as well as fine flour and oil for a meal offering.

On the basis of these sacrifices, the priest had pronounced the man clean (Lev. 14:7), because these sacrifices picture the person and work of Jesus Christ. The sin offering shows Christ atoning for a person’s sin. The trespass offering reminds us that Christ paid the debt we owed to God because, like the leper, we were unable to serve Him during our days of uncleanness. In the burnt offering, the man dedicated himself completely to God, and the meal offering displayed the perfections of Christ accepted for the imperfections of the worshipper.

The unique thing about this ceremony is that the priest treated the cleansed leper like a fellow priest! He put the blood of the trespass offering on the man’s right ear, right thumb, and right big toe. He sprinkled oil on the man seven times and then put the oil on the blood that was already on his ear, thumb, and toe. After that, he poured the oil on the man’s head. This is similar to the ceremony Moses used when he ordained Aaron and his sons (chap. 8). What grace that God should treat a former leper like a priest! Six times in this section the Lord declares that the priest “made atonement’’ for the man (vv. 18–21, 29–31), which means that his sins were forgiven.

Since the leper had been an outcast, unable to work and earn money, perhaps he wasn’t able to bring all three animals for sacrifices. Thus God permitted the poorer man to bring birds for the sin offering and the burnt offering (vv. 21–23, 30–31). In addition, the Lord didn’t require any restitution along with the trespass offering. God makes it as easy as possible for sinners to be forgiven and restored. But sinners act as if salvation is so difficult, that they can’t possibly respond to God’s call.