Bible Commentaries

The possibility of the restoration of a leper to health was recognized and provision was made accordingly. In the case of the individual, the ceremony was elaborate. The priest must first visit him without the camp. If he found that the man was indeed cured of his leprosy, a religious ceremony initiated the movement of his return to communion. Then ere he was admitted to the camp he must himself be washed and his hair shaved.

After seven days of waiting there was to be another guilt offering, the anointing of the man with blood and oil, after which a sin offering, a burnt offering, and a meal offering were to be presented. Then he was restored to worship.

Once more the strictness of the law is revealed in the instructions given as to the cleansing of the house of the leper, which was to be observed in the time ahead when the people would be dwelling in the land.

The reading of this whole section (chapters 13, 14) impresses the mind with the strictness of the law of God concerning such things. It reveals the interest of God in the physical wellbeing of His people and His unceasing antagonism to everything likely to harm them. In our own day and land the purely Eastern qualities of these laws may seem to have no application, but their permanent values speak with no uncertain sound, teaching us among other things that it is impossible for men to be loyal to God and careless in any measure concerning the laws of sanitation. For example, it is ungodly for a community claiming to be in any sense Christian to tolerate the existence of dwellings which are infected in the slightest degree with what may be harmful to the highest physical condition of the people.