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?