0:03
is that when there was healing, it was through the intercession of a prophet. In the case of Miriam, it was Moses. In the case of Naaman, it was Elisha. Naaman didn't actually get
0:15
healed of leprosy so much as his leprosy was given to Gahazi, Elisha's servant. And not only to his to him, but to his descendants
0:25
after him. I guess that would be an acquired trait. Okay, but that that was definitely punishment. Gahazi was really not doing well. And so when we look at
0:40
these um if um if cleansed and we know that Uzziah wasn't he was a leper to his death. Okay. So if cleansed, it was by
1:05
prophet. Now I bring this out because the Hebrew word that's used in Leviticus 13 and 14 is the same as is used in all of these cases. And that word is the first word up there.
1:17
The second word msura is simply a derivation of that word and it means one who has so they are actually they're kindred words. The one is talking about the
1:28
disease itself. The second one's talking about the one who has that disease. And and so what you have in our English Bibles is leprosy and
1:46
leper and that's what you read. So when you read that about Miriam, about King Uzziah, about Naaman or about the the uh the folks in Levit Leviticus 13 and 14, that's what you're reading. Leprosy and
1:58
leper, and they are related words in the in the
2:09
So is our understanding of leprosy even all that accurate? uh we tend to think of leprosy. So let let's let's kind of look at uh
2:30
Well, first of all, it's one of the most dreaded diseases in human history and in in almost every ancient culture and many many modern but what we would call maybe um non-industrialized
2:43
cultures that still exist today. Leprosy is still considered a judgment of the of the gods is directly related in many cultures to personal um offense against
3:38
banishment, quarantine, and even terminal neglect. even in the 20th century, probably even the 21st, the the uh the essays that I
3:51
read the I think were from the 1990s concerning some tribes in Papo New Guinea and and how they deal with um with lepers. And so the society's
4:14
attitude outcast and even terminal neglect. This this is so renowned that there are both uh religious and secular
4:27
organizations that have been formed for the treatment of lepers, leper colonies, leper hospitals. Um, and so not all of of human society has reacted against the
4:40
lepers, but as a class, they are probably the most um dreaded, feared, and cast out disease
5:07
irony that it's not terribly contagious. Okay, it's now called Hansen's disease. Obviously, in modern science, there's been a lot more research concerning all of these
5:18
diseases. Um, and and so let's let's look at what we know about what we consider to be leprosy. And again that is the the
5:31
the um the disease the symptom of which is is basically the disintegration of the human the human form with the the the falling off of
5:44
fingers and toes, the loss of eyesight, falling off of noses, um just a complete disintegration. And and so we have to
5:54
compare what we call leprosy with what we're reading in Leviticus 13 and 14. Now, Hansen's disease, again, this this is what this is the the
6:31
of. Um we tend to think that it is highly contagious. That's why the fear u it is it is so visibly horrible. That's that's why the sense of divine judgment.
6:43
However, there have been people, famous people, Naaman in our in the Bible was a man with man with leprosy who nonetheless continued to be the king's general and
6:56
to lead troops into battle. Um, King Uzziah no longer lived with his family, which they might not have minded from what we read, but he
7:07
continued to to reign. He he wasn't supplanted by his son. He continued to reign until his death. King Baldwin IVth, king of Jerusalem. He's known as the leper king, was struck with leprosy
7:19
at his youth. Um, he died, I think, around an age of 24. So, he didn't live a long time, but he lived a long long enough time to become the king of Jerusalem during the
7:30
the Middle Ages during the time when um the what was it the which crusade the first crusade actually conquered? That was the only one that actually did. Yeah, the other ones were um led by
7:44
buffoons. Uh but Baldwin continued to rule. He continued to fight and lead troops into battle. Um but he had leprosy. So leprosy has not
7:57
always been treated um it certainly not relegated only to the lower class and to the poor. We have examples in the Bible as well as in history of of people with
8:08
leprosy. Um now what he had was based on the fact that he died at such such a young age was probably Hansen's disease not okay he had what we consider
8:21
leprosy what we what I don't you know I I'm not an expert on leprosy I'm only giving you what I what I've read in preparation for the study and trying to figure out what it is Leviticus 13 and
8:32
14 are actually teaching us. But there are some things about Hansen's disease and what we consider to be leprosy that we simply don't find in Leviticus 13 and
9:00
Uh if the New Testament had been written in Hebrew, they would have used that word and they would have called them. Okay. What they actually had is
9:10
not determined by that word. Okay. So they may have had Hansen's disease, they may have um or they may have had something else.
9:22
So we really that's that's the problem even the symptoms of Leviticus 13 and and I did consult some articles written by physicians who deal with this both Jewish and Christian and secular who
9:34
just were you know fascinated by leprosy and and the biblical view of leprosy in in the interpretation of Leviticus 13-14 has had a powerful effect on how
9:46
the west has handled this disease. Okay. Again, there's first of all, there's a just a onetoone correlation uh between the disease and
9:58
sin. There really is no nuance in most ancient writings and into the Middle Ages concerning the relationship between leprosy and the judgment of God, both
10:09
within Israel, then Christianity, but but also in in all of the other ancient near eastern religions. And I imagine it's probably the same around the world in all cultures that it's just
10:20
considered to be a a horrible horrible disease. But what we what what Hansen wrote about this disease, what medical records have shown is that it it
10:42
slowly and contrary to popular belief is not highly contagious. It is It is contagious but not highly so. Uh in fact it's apparently not really very
10:54
contagious. Okay. So it progresses very slowly and is not highly contagious.
11:15
physically deforming and deforming and terminal. There is no cure for
11:42
Yeah, there's no cure. There's there's it's like a number of of diseases that we still have. There are treatments, but there's no cure.
12:00
Ah, I don't know. Uh, bacterial. I I I sorry, I don't know that. But h bacterial. Okay. Um but in spite of all the research that has been done um there there's no cure. It it has
12:13
been greatly minimized in industrialized cultures probably through sanitation and hygiene. I I don't know the details of
12:23
of that just like many diseases. Um, and there are still many diseases that if you get them, uh, they will linger. They will stay with you the rest of your
12:34
life. Um, now this is one that will never leave you. It, it, uh, it is progressive, physically destructive, and terminal. That is not what we read in
12:48
Leviticus 13-14. As a matter of fact, Leviticus 14 presumes the healing of those of Leviticus 13. Leviticus 13. It is presumed and it is the whole
13:00
tenor. It in fact it's not a conditional if the meds is healed. No, it's when when he is healed he will do this
13:12
and he will do that in terms of his purification. So when we compare the two diseases they they don't actually compare. Now this is not something new.
13:25
First and second century physicians knew this. Uh the Greek historian and physician Palibius wrote about theat that what this this disease
13:38
they said no that's that's not leprosy. This is leprosy. That's not leprosy. They understood that what we were dealing with here was was like severe cases of psoriasis or eczema.
13:52
What zarat means is skin affliction. It comes from the root word scab. So it basically means scabby skin. That's that's what it
14:04
means and it it does not mean leprosy. However, when the uh Septuagent was translated, this is where it all kind of
14:16
goes south in terms of our not just the translation but our understanding of the biblical sat the the biblical um
14:27
uncleanness of the skin affliction Leviticus 13. So this is what happens. Okay, I guess this is letter C.
14:47
evolution. And I know word evolution is a bad word, but things do change over time. Certainly words do.
15:05
yeah. And you and you find out how serious it is by the remember the holiest zones we talked about that the holiest was the holy of holies and then there was the
15:15
most holy place and there was the altar the tent of meeting then there was the camp and then there was outside the camp and that wasn't even really a holiness zone because outside the camp was not
15:28
holy it was wilderness it had that rep it has that we'll talk about that more so yeah it's I'm not minimizing the severity of what we're dealing with. I'm simply trying to say what it is we're
15:39
dealing with as opposed to what at least I always thought when I heard the word leprosy. You know, I thought of Miriam and Tza in
15:49
Benur. I I I think of of people wrapped in rags with no not 10 fingers anymore, you know? That's what I always thought of. And that is a real disease and we
16:00
know a lot more about it in the in the modern era. And the more we know about it, the more conclusive is the um the judgment of medical as well as biblical
16:11
scholars that these aren't the same things. Let me put it this way. Leprosy, as we understand it, would qualify as zarat, but they are not co-extensive
16:25
sets. That there is more that qualifies for zarat than leprosy. Leprosy would be the most severe
16:38
case of Zarat because it is not curable. It's still a skin affliction and ritually unclean. So it would still
16:49
fall under the rubric of Leviticus 13 but not Leviticus 14 because there would be no hope of purification. Okay.
17:00
purification. Okay. Well, they all have to go outside the camp. To some to some extent, they all have to go outside the camp. They just can't come back in ever. You cannot come back in until you are cleansed or healed of Zahara. Well,
17:13
with leprosy as Hansen's disease, that's not going to happen. It might slow down its progression, but it will never reverse and it will never cease. So, you will
17:24
never come back into the camp. That is not the tenor of Leviticus 14. So I I'm I'm proposing here that we're dealing with a word in the Hebrew that
17:55
Lepra. Lepra means scab or boil. or some or some eruption of the skin. You can imagine Greek uh middle
18:07
schools where everybody is look at his lepra. He's got so much acne would be lepra. Okay. So psoriasis, eczema, rash
18:22
would be lepra. So um you know so far this is fine. It's not that the translators of the of the septuagent did anything wrong. Okay. But
18:34
as time goes on, this word is is then joined to a disease
18:49
um elephantis, a disease of the swelling of the groin and the legs and the breasts and the arms. much more serious than psoriasis or
18:59
eczema but and also much more visibly deforming and that comes under the rubric of leperra. Okay, so we get I
19:11
don't know that I'll spell this correctly. I can spell elephant but I think it's something like that. Okay, it is
19:22
called Lepra in this is now we're getting into the second temple period, but we're also getting just basically into the Greek medical world. And this this word is
19:33
evolving as we move on through time into the Middle Ages. This word kind of pushes out all other types of skin affliction and becomes associated with
19:45
what we now understand as Hansen's disease. So an innocent translation from the Hebrew into Hebrew into Greek over the passing of of uh
19:57
centuries had become compartmentalized into a particular subgroup of that much broader rubric of
20:08
skin disease or skin affliction to mean essentially what we now commonly understand as understand as leprosy which you can easily see comes from the Greek word lepra.
20:19
Okay. So, so there's no direct connection between the Hebrew words or even the septuagent, the Greek word that was used to translate the Hebrew word.
20:30
There's no direct connection with that word and the disease that we commonly understand, the deforming, destructive, and eventually terminal disease that we
20:41
understand as leprosy. I can't find anybody of the scholarly world, whether Old Testament scholars, Jewish or
20:53
Christian or um non-binary. Okay, there whatever they call themselves now. All right. None of them or medical scholars that treat and there's a number
21:05
you can find a lot of articles written and published in the in the AMA for example um about Leviticus 13 and 14 because this is one of those things that people dig their teeth in. Is this
21:16
really Hansen's disease? Nobody thinks that anymore and haven't for quite a long time and yet most of us mere readers of the Bible still do. for what
21:41
right. Yeah. So the physicians in the first and second century didn't physicians in the middle ages including Maymonades who I quote in the notes didn't and then on into the enlightenment and the modern med medical
21:53
era they definitely don't it this is not the this is not your grandmother's leprosy. Okay. This is not what we're dealing with is not the leprosy that we
22:04
tend to think it is. Now, that right there is a paradigm shift. It was for me at least like, "Oh, wait a minute. I I just always had this image in my mind uh
22:14
that comes from movies, of course, with the bandaged person." And, you know, that was common Sunday school.
22:47
Children's and it just keeps going. It just keeps going and going. You mentioned it was a big deal.
23:02
Unfortunately, the the the mistake is more contagious than the disease. Okay. Um yeah, it it this is one of those situations where the the um the educated
23:13
echelon of the church of of Judaism of of just medical science, it has not trickled down to the average reader of Leviticus. Um and there and because of
23:40
Lepri, all other things that would have been considered as lepra or lepri in the ancient Greek and then of course zarat in the ancient Hebrew, they all get kind of pushed out in the common
23:51
understanding of this word and it becomes associated just as the English word tells us with leprosy and leper. And so when you read Leviticus 13 and 14 or even
24:02
or even commentaries, it's like the the writers, some of them actually explicitly say it's not worth the effort. We just keep using the word leprosy. So what they'll
24:12
do is they'll spend time at the very beginning saying, "Yes, I'm saying leprosy, and I'm saying leper, but I don't mean leprosy, and I don't mean leper, or at least I don't mean what you think the word means."
24:24
because what we're dealing with here is is really um completely different. The contagion may or may not have been
24:36
physical, but it was definitely ritual. So once again, we're dealing with the the confusion between medical and hygienic versus ritual understanding.
24:47
John, whenever I think of leprosy, I think of the skin turning white. Yes. The defining The defining that is defining it is defining in
24:58
Leviticus 13 but not actually in act Hansen's disease. That's actually one of the differentials between Hansen's disease and and what we read in
25:09
Leviticus 13. In Leviticus 13, we do read about the skin turning scaly white and even the hair within the the area turning white. And u the several medical
25:22
doctors that I article that I read um one of them very very explicitly said from a clinical point of view Leviticus 13 doesn't have enough information to
25:34
decide what it is. The information is very vague there. And and the vagueness is probably is probably because it's not intended as a medical
25:45
document. It's intended as again a visible manifestation of blemish, which could have been what we
25:56
think of as leprosy. But in which case, you wouldn't have to bother with Leviticus 14. You could just skip on to Leviticus 15 and keep on going because you'd never get to Leviticus 14. Lord,
26:19
Yeah, that it it has an incredible enduring uh power and it certainly has not been dropped. Uh I would say the reason it hasn't been dropped is because of the the horror that the first of all
26:30
the horror that the disease engenders in society and also this association right here that is associated with divine
27:11
Yeah, there's two others that are quite common that sunrise and sunset. Sunrise. Okay, let's go back to filler on the roof.
27:27
Yeah. I think though this one is a little more notorious than that. Um what happens with Novacane is is like I I'll have a Coke. It has become a trade name and so everything's considered it's just an it's an anesthesia. Okay. Um, but
27:39
with this word leprosy, it also drew to itself an an odium and a perspective of wickedness that stuck to it like the
27:50
rags. And that's one of the reasons why I think the word, you know, we don't go around saying Hansen's disease colonies.
28:20
right? Yeah. So, we plague is a is a good one. Uh there there are a number that stick around, but this one um I I think Lauren, it's good to ask that because it it really does kind of reveal its um sinister nature. Um which also
28:32
reveals a misinterpretation of Leviticus 13-14. Okay. And that misinterpretation comes on two counts. And I'm going to put that up here somewhat as a
28:57
misinterpretations. One that One that zarat is the commonly understood leprosy. Okay. So when we think of the skin when we think of the skin afflictions that we read in Leviticus
29:07
13, we need to to disabuse ourselves of the idea maybe even the image that we have of lepers with the deforming
29:18
destructive and terminal disease. That's not what we're dealing with here. So the first mistake is to associate
29:40
We have to disassociate oursel from the actual word we're reading. You know, we're reading it says this is the law of leprosy. No, this is the the the the Torah of Torah of Zarat. Okay. Law. Yeah, that's fine.
29:53
Torah, but Zarat is not leprosy as we understand it. We've taken the Greek translation through the mutation and evolution of the word and the diseases
30:06
and its association eventually with one particular branch of skin disease. And that's where we've hung our hat and that's kind of what's locked in
30:17
our mind. And in order to understand Leviticus and 13, we have to break that hole. We have to say, okay, that's not what it is. The second thing we have to do, and we've talked about this
30:47
What we have done is we have confused the examples with the actual
31:01
affliction. God can use a disease to punish. That does not mean everyone who is who has that disease is being punished. Does that make sense? You know, when he brings punishment, when he
31:11
brought punishment upon the Egyptian, it says he did it with plagues, but the other plagues happened too that were not linked directly to divine punishment. You can always go back to the universal
31:23
corruption of sin. Yeah, you can always go back there. But that's see that's what this is the mistake that Job's friends made. He was being punished. And
31:33
by what by the way, he had Zaharat, okay? and he was healed um divinely God healed him. But he did have this disease or whatever whatever
31:44
disease he had would have been classified by this word because he was scraping the boils with a with a a a pottery shard. Okay, but of course what was what was his friends? What what was
31:57
their diagnosis? You must have sinned. Okay. So, we see we see an actual example of this mistake being made and we see Job railing against it and at the end God
32:08
never explains why he did it but he sides with Job against his the other three guys. So, that teaches us that yes, God can afflict Miriam with Zarat
32:18
because of her rebellion against Moses. But that doesn't mean everyone who has zaharat is being individually punished by God for a specific sin. Once again in
32:31
Leviticus 11 12 13 14 15 there is no mention of sin. And in fact when atonement is atonement is made instead of the formula that we have
32:43
back in the early part of Leviticus where it says his sins will be forgiven. Now it says and he will be cleansed. So there's a different term
32:55
used with regard to kipor with regard to atonement and it's not this the forgiveness of sins it's the
33:06
cleansing. So again see we make these mistakes if we if we make these perception errors then they will guide our interpretation and what's worse they
33:16
will guide our application. And now we look upon somebody who has leprosy and we all too often think that person is under the judgment of God. Now we may not think that much in the west
33:26
anymore because we don't think of God much in the west anymore. There are still cultures in which that is that is intimately uh united and linked together is the idea that if you have that
33:58
We are in the same territory. Thank you. And that I think was a Thursday evening. We were talking it was I think it was biblical theology. We were talking about how um you know there was a time when everything that happened was considered to be a direct providential reaction
34:09
from God against your sin. And then there's there's now a time where we don't make that connection at all that we don't we don't believe that God can use anything uh physical like that to to
34:20
punish us. And both views are wrong. But you know the balance is that Psalm 139 search my heart Lord and show me if
34:30
there be any way in me anything wrong with me. So it's a valid question if things are going wrong to ask the Holy Spirit. You probably already know, but
34:41
the Holy Spirit will let you know if there's a particular unrepentant sin. Maybe this is the Lord disciplining you,
34:51
right? But that but what's what's wrong is to just assume that if things are going like the prosperity gospel does, you know, that you're going through financial trouble, God's judging
35:01
you. No, that's no better than Job's three friends. Okay. So that that that mindset has never gone away, but it's never been made. It's never right. Never
35:12
universally right. And we shouldn't ever, I think, have to rely on others to convict us of sin. God gave us the Holy Spirit to do just that.
35:24
And and if if other if everyone else says that you have sinned and yet your conscience is clear then with Job you need to stand firm and say the Lord is
35:36
my judge and I know of nothing as Paul says I know of nothing against me. I am not by that justified he says but I'm just not aware of anything that I've done wrong. Okay. So whatever is being
35:47
thrown at me, I'm going to just let go because God has not made me aware of of a particular sin for which this affliction or this trial or whatever
35:59
might be disciplined. We we can't make a connection that is that is unbreakable between affliction and sin except for
36:09
original sin and universal corruption. We can make that connection.
36:26
Yep. Who sinned? This man or his parents? Right. But then he said nothing, right? Yep. You know, so and Jesus would
36:40
know. And so he gives us those examples that allow us to to at least kind of ask, okay, is this because I I have sinned.
36:51
All right. Um and and I came to the conclusion that by eating scallops, I had not sinned in spite of my appendix. You know, I went through the No, actually I wasn't even thinking that
37:02
during that time. But, you know, you can you you should if if you're just everything you do seems to just not go well. Or if you're the woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years and you've
37:13
been to every physician in town and they have taken all your money and you're just worse, might be a good time to ask the Lord. I mean, if there and find out that you're not actually living in
37:25
unrepentant sin, but then we don't want to make that direct connection. So, yeah, Justin, you're right. We're in the exact same territory here and we're going to see it and we're going to see it and we're going to see it. We It's so easy to read these things in Leviticus
37:38
and we we have we have sat under moralistic preaching for so long that it is incredibly difficult for
37:48
us to us to disassociate unpleasant disassociate unpleasant afflictions from personal sin. That is just uh what's the word that
38:01
that's um it's just the way preachers run and in all generations. And that is the the fear and the guilt that you can engender into
38:12
people by by linking their afflictions and their trials and their failures with personal offense against God. That's not biblical. He he doesn't
38:24
do that. that there is a consequence. You know, you you got to look at the flip side as as the psalmist did in Psalm 73 when he pondered the rich man
38:36
and how everything goes well for him, but he has no regard for God, right? So, what about the opposite circumstance? If God is so quick to punish us when we trip, why does he bless the wicked who
38:49
aren't even up? you know, they're they are they're they're wallowing in their sin and rebellion against God, and yet they're prospering and they're healthy and they're living long lives. So, you can't
38:59
even go down that logical path at all. God knows what he's doing. He is sovereign. We can't we can't find simple mathematical formulas that answer all of
39:12
our circumstances. But when we come to, and this is kind of ironic, I don't know if you'll catch the irony, um, but liberal scholars believe that all that we're studying right
39:22
now was a political power ploy by the priesthood returning from the Babylonian
39:35
exile. The most powerful tool that religion that clergy have ever had is guilt and fear. Why don't the writer, why don't the priests use that here in Leviticus
39:48
11:12, 13,4 and 15? Why don't they say this is because of your wickedness? This is because of your sin. That's what you kind of envision with a with a political
39:58
clergy trying to manipulate and control a society, but there's no mention at all of sin. And even the word even the sin
40:10
offering as we looked at when we looked at that back in early Leviticus that's not a good translation. It's more of a reparation than it is a sin offering because we saw that it was being offered
40:20
where there was no active sin involved. It's a it's an offering of of restoration between the Israelite and
40:31
Yahweh. So our English translations usually are fine. They don't bother, you know, they don't get us into any difficulty. But we keep reading leprosy, we keep reading leper, we keep reading
40:41
sin offering, and we make those traditional connections that are actually contrary to the to the text. What we're dealing with here is
40:54
ritual uncleanness and separation from Yahweh. That's the whole principle here. Remember that the theme is uh twofold.
41:05
How will Yahweh, a holy God, dwell in the midst of unholy people? And the flip side is how do an unholy people dwell in the presence of a holy God? That's the
41:16
rubric under everything we read in Leviticus. That's that's it. That's that's it, right? If really the whole Pentatuk may in a sense, the whole Old Testament is studying that
41:27
question. And that is really where the greatest pertinance of the Old Testament comes to the New Testament and the New Covenant because we are a people dwelling in the presence of a holy God.
41:38
And he is a holy God dwelling in the midst of an unholy people. And not only that, he's dwelling in an unholy people. And so you start reading Paul's letters,
41:49
especially to Corinthians, and you realize, well, that's really where he's coming from when he says, ' Do you not know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit dwells
41:59
in you? He's he's back in the camp with the tabernacle and the holiness zones. And so he says, "Then come out from among them and be separate. Purify yourself and touch no unclean thing, and
42:12
I will be your God, and you shall be my people." 2 Corinthians 6. You see the connection there? So even determining what the disease is is is going down the wrong
42:24
path. And and even the medical writers who have commented on Leviticus, they have almost uniformly come to that same conclusion. The symptoms are are far too
42:35
vague to give any doctor, any physician a handle on what exactly what would be the modern disease that is the equivalent. That's not what's being
42:47
brought about here. What we're dealing with is something that made the Israelite unclean. And because they were unclean, they were therefore separated. They were
42:59
moved out those holiness zones, some further than others, and the return was harder for some than others. The hardest was corpse
43:15
defilement. But we'll also find out in Leviticus 14 that the Israelite who had long-term zarat had a multiplestep process to get
43:26
back into full communion as a child of Yave. Okay? So some in some it was you took a bath and you waited till the sun went down. That's it. That was all it
43:36
was. Or you washed your clothes and took a bath and waited till the sun went down. Some of them were seven days and then others were even longer like the child birth. Okay. So you see
43:47
there's these different lengths of time that cannot be linked to any uh medical condition and say oh that's why they did that. No, it it's all about keeping
43:58
before the mind of the Israelite that they were dwelling in the presence of a holy God. And because of that, they were called to be a holy people. And just like the food, this was
44:13
kept visually in front of them. Especially when we start to read about this zaharat one one phrase I think is
44:24
very significant when this affliction appeared they were to present themselves to the priest now there are some scholars and commentators who have made the mistake of assuming that the priest then
44:36
is assuming the role of a physician there is nothing said about treatment only treatment only diagnosis and even that diagnosis had
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nothing to do with the actual medical affliction. It had only to do with whether or not the person was ritually unclean. The process is actually rather
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gracious. So that for example a teenager with acne would not have been sent out of the camp because they're given seven days and then often another seven days
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before the final determination is made as to whether they are unclean. So it wasn't just off the cuff. If you had something that was temporary, you had seven days for it to
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clear up. And then often if it didn't clear up but it didn't spread, you had another seven days for it to clear up and only then were you. So it's it's not
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some harsh retributive everybody's got to be a perfect um face. No, but it is visible because you have the phrase in Leviticus 13 when the man
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comes before the priest with with a scale on his scalp or his forehead or his hands or anything the priest can see.
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Now, that kind of means if the guy doesn't strip down to his birthday suit for the for the examination, it's whatever can be seen, whatever is visible, which would
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be the neck, the face, the head, and the hands and the feet. Okay? That's because visible is what matters. Not the actual medical
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condition, but the the visible. Now, this may sound like visible religion, you know, all on the surface. No, it again, it's just it's a constant reminder for the Israelites that they
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are to be a holy people. And any evidence of evidence of uncleanness is unholy. It needs to be separated. Depending on the nature of
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it, however, it would depend on how far they were they were separated. The meora was sent outside the camp. the camp. So this is a very serious even though
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it's not the leprosy as we consider leprosy nonetheless it's very serious because he was put outside or she was put outside the camp. Now if you read Leviticus and you kind of do the numbers
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you come to the realization that there was a camp outside the camp and there were a lot of people on any given day that would be living
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outside the outside the camp. Now, it wasn't supposed to be that way, but it's kind of like where we read, where is that? In Deuteronomy, where we read the three things about the poor. You will not have any poor if
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there are any poor. The poor will always be among be among you. Okay? All right. You're not supposed to have six people in in the camp of Israel, but you're g when you
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have six people, the sick people will always be with you, and they're going to be outside the camp. So, there's So, every time the camp got up and moved, this camp got up and moved after it.
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You got this little of a little camp following the other camp and then when that camp encamped wherever the boundary of that camp was, this other camp camped outside of it. So there was
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always another camp with the camp which was always a reminder to Israel and especially to the families of those midorah that our God is a holy God. His
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Yeah, I think it all goes together. uh he is the god the god who gives us the power to make wealth. He's also the god of our health and well-being and and so all sense of wellness shalom or wheel
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which includes your physical well-being and your social and familial well-being as well as your economic well-being. That sense of shalom is with God. And
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there are so many things that as the scripture says, your sin has made a separation between you and God. Separation and then repatriation. That's
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what we're dealing with here. Leviticus 13 is separation. So if we look at the holiness zones with the holy of holies
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uh and uh and the I got that backwards little one the most holy place and then the tent of meeting and then the camp. Okay. And
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then outside the camp. So Leviticus 13 is moving that direction.
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Leviticus 14 is moving that direction. And depending on the severity of the of the affliction, the length of that exclusion
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or the in the the complexity of the repatriation is proportional to the actual affliction. actual affliction. And that's also that that's true even in
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Leviticus 15 with the bodily discharges. Now I'm going to give some some food for thought in terms of Leviticus 13:14 and 15. In
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15. In 13 Zarat is visible and you go to the priest for the
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diagnosis. In 15 it's not visible. The priest is not involved in the diagnosis at diagnosis at all. This is a purely
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uncleanness. There's nothing visible. The man with the discharge, he doesn't go to the priest. Priest doesn't check it out. He doesn't have seven days. He simply has a discharge and therefore he's unclean. the woman with her
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menstrual cycle or with a indeterminate length of flux. There's no mention of going to the priest to have it diagnosed. It's it was self-p policing that that comes under the whole
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rubric that we read about in Exodus 19. You will be to me a kingdom of priests. that even here where we do see
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a priesthood and we do see their role as as mediators between the people and God, yet that doesn't leave the people off the hook, first of all. Nor does it
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deprive them of their own responsibility before God. So here's the food you eat. You see it, it's there. Everybody else sees it, too. Here's the skin, that
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which the priest sees. But then we go to Leviticus 15 and this is private. This is not you know what you read in Leviticus 15 is not publicly vis
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visible just as it is not in our own culture. Okay. It is it is kept private. You don't go around with a
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sign that says you have a discharge. They'll think you just left the army or something. um that that's an important concept that
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because we're we're actually moving into the more intimate and more personal life of the Israelite as we move into chapter 15. And when all of this is put together
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and there's so many ways that you could be unclean, you begin to understand why the day of atonement was needed, why the sanctuary had to be cleaned, had to be cleansed once a year.
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Okay? So that that's where we're headed. We're headed to that. All of this is going on in Leviticus 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. And even with all of that, there's so much of
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it. uncleanness is acrewing. It's almost like it's it's it's a it's kind of an accretion to the to the sanctuary and to the sancta. The
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the holiness of Israel is being diminished. It's being uh corrupted. And if God is going to remain, there must be yum kapor, which in the rabbitic writings in
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the Mishna is simply yoma, the day that that was known as the day. And and as we read all of this and just see how again
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if you really think about the fact that it's not leprosy, it's just skin affliction. And then you you look at he Leviticus 15 where it's like every month
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for the woman and apparently quite often for the man as well. Okay. And they're both treated pretty much equally in that chapter and they're supposed to be self-reporting, not not being looked
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over by a priest. You realize there's no escaping uncleanness. That's the whole point. This was never meant to save Israel. It wasn't meant to save a single soul. The
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law was not given that man should be justified. The law was given and sin abound. Okay? And that's what we're reading. Paul sheds light through the Holy Spirit back on what we're reading.
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But even within what we're reading, we can see, wow, this is it was Peter who said, "Why would we lay upon them a burden that neither our fathers nor us are able to bear?" That's what he's
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talking about. An unbearable burden. And yet not that it was intended to crush. No, it was intended to teach. It was a school
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master leading to Christ. It was it was intended to teach that a ultimate perfect sacrifice needed to be offered. It was intended to teach that God's mercy and grace was the only thing that
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anybody could rely on, not any of these things. So, we're getting more and more intense as we read through the purity laws. So, let's take a look at them. Um, just
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as we uh we go through chapter um 13, I do want to read a comment by a medical missionary
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um who's this is the fellow who spent time um in Papua New Guinea. I think that may be where he is from. Let me see if I can find the the quote here.
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second. Well, we've already discussed this, but uh just to give you the the kind of the medical background, Hansen's disease is the medical term for what was popularly called leprosy is a dreaded malady. It mutilates and horribly
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disfigures. It is contagious but spreads slowly. Certain images readily come to mind when a leper is mentioned. Lumpy skin, glazed eyeballs, hands without
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fingers, etc. Um, again, just to kind of reiterate, these are not what we read in Leviticus 13. When we go to Leviticus 13, and let's let's turn
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representative. Verse two, when a man has on the skin of his body a swelling or a scab or a bright spot, and it becomes an infection of leprosy, that's the word zaharat, on the skin of his
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body. Then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons, the priests. The priest shall look at the mark on the skin of the body. And if the hair of the infection is turned white
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and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of the body, it is an infection of leprosy. Then the priest has looked at him, he shall pronounce him unclean. But there are other
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conditions that he now goes through. And when you read it, it may seem a bit tedious. But as I mentioned earlier, this is actually God's grace so that we don't have a larger camp outside the
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camp than we have inside the camp. That there are a lot of and you you I mean you probably we still have them. You wake up and you've got a somewhere and
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you're like where'd that come from? You know, and then a few days later it's gone. Well, in in Israel it might have been something that you would go to the
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priest And then the priest would look at it and say, "Well, it's it doesn't appear to be growing. Let's wait seven days." And you come back seven days later and it's gone. The priest says, "You're clean. It's fine." Imagine they had a I mean,
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there's like three million of these people. This this is a this is amaz I mean most of the time they're killing animals and the rest of the time they're
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diagnosing Zarat. This this is an all the time thing. if in fact Israel ever followed this. Okay? And and there's not a lot of
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positive data in the scriptures that Israel was ever really faithful in these things, which is why God soon afterwards brings the
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brings the prophets that they they're going to neglect all of these things um quite quite often. So, let's um let's see where we are in terms of of
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the issues that we're dealing with. Okay. Yes.
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Yeah, you're anticipating the close of this lesson. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you are. Okay. Because I think that's what we're dealing with here. We're we've already been clearly taught that
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you do not bring a blemished animal before the Lord, right? But what we're now being taught is you don't bring a blemished person before the Lord
