Leviticus 14:33

14:33-53 The leprosy in a house is unaccountable to us, as well as the leprosy in a garment; but now sin, where that reigns in a house, is a plague there, as it is in a heart. Masters of families should be aware, and afraid of the first appearance of sin in their families, and put it away, whatever it is. If the leprosy is got into the house, the infected part must be taken out. If it remain in the house, the whole must be pulled down. The owner had better be without a dwelling, than live in one that was infected. The leprosy of sin ruins families and churches. Thus sin is so interwoven with the human body, that it must be taken down by death.

And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron,.... At the same time as the above laws were delivered concerning the leper, and the cleansing of him, or however immediately upon that; the affair of the leprosy of houses being what belonged to the priest to examine into and cleanse from: saying; as follows.

Leprosy in houses (33–53) Nothing definite is known about these appearances on the walls of a house, which are here described as leprosy. It was regarded as a special visitation of God ( Leviticus 14:34 , ‘I put the plague’); the Jews believed that the plague was peculiar to Palestine and the chosen people, and was not found in the houses of foreigners. The owner of the house must say ‘There seemeth to me …’ ( Leviticus 14:35 ): the decision whether the house is leprous rests with the priest. The order to empty the house before the priest comes to inspect shews that there is no fear of contagion. It has been suggested that the appearances were due to damp, or decay, or the growth of some vegetable matter. The diagnosis is similar to that for leprosy in man; the remedy is to remove the stones in which the plague is, and to scrape and plaister the house. If the plague is not stayed, the house must be pulled down. The method of purification if the house be pronounced clean is the same as that prescribed for the leper in Leviticus 14:4-7 . Further regulations are found in Negâim , chs. 12, 13. OF A HOUSE, AND ITS CLEANSING (verses 33-53). The subject of leprosy in houses must be regarded from the same point of view as that of leprosy in clothes. The regulations respecting it are not sanitary laws, as Lange represents them, but rest, as Keil argues, upon an ideal or symbolical basis. The same thought is attached to all species of uncleanness.

Something - it matters not what - produces a foul and repulsive appearance in the walls of a house. That is in itself sufficient to make that house unclean; for whatever is foul and repulsive is representative of moral and spiritual defilement, and therefore is itself symbolically defiling and defiled. It has been suggested that the special cause of the affection of the houses in Canaan was saltpetre exuding from the materials employed in their building, or iron pyrites in the stone used. This may have been so, or more probably it was the growth of some fungus. Whatever it was, the appearance created by it was so similar to that of leprosy in the human body, as to derive its name from the latter by analogy.Leviticus 14:33

This section is separated from that on leprosy in clothing Leviticus 13:47-59 with which it would seem to be naturally connected, and is placed last of all the laws concerning leprosy, probably on account of its being wholly prospective. While the Israelites were in the wilderness, the materials of their dwellings were of nearly the same nature as those of their clothing, and would be liable to the same sort of decay. They were therefore included under the same law. I put the plague - Yahweh here speaks as the Lord of all created things, determining their decay and destruction as well as their production. Compare Isaiah 45:6-7; Jonah 4:7; Matthew 21:20.

21-32. if he be poor, and cannot get so much; then he shall take one lamb—a kind and considerate provision for an extension of the privilege to lepers of the poorer class. The blood of their smaller offering was to be applied in the same process of purification and they were as publicly and completely cleansed as those who brought a costlier offering (Ac 10:34).

(33) And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron. —Whilst the law about the cleansing of restored lepers was addressed to Moses alone (see Leviticus 14:1 ), the regulations about leprous houses, like those with regard to leprous garments and persons, are for the same reason delivered to Moses and Aaron conjointly. (See Leviticus 13:1 .)

The law concerning the leprosy of houses was made known to Moses and Aaron, as intended for the time when Israel should have taken possession of Canaan and dwell in houses. As it was Jehovah who gave His people the land for a possession, so "putting the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of their possession" is also ascribed to Him ( Leviticus 14:34 ), inasmuch as He held it over them, to remind the inhabitants of the house that they owed not only their bodies but also their dwelling-places to the Lord, and that they were to sanctify these to Him. By this expression, "I put," the view which Knobel still regards as probable, viz., that the house-leprosy was only the transmission of human leprosy to the walls of the houses, is completely overthrown; not to mention the fact, that throughout the whole description there is not the slightest hint of any such transmission, but the inhabitants, on the contrary, are spoken of as clean, i.e., free from leprosy, and only those who went into the house, or slept in the house after it had been shut up as suspicious, are pronounced unclean ( Leviticus 14:46 , Leviticus 14:47 ), though even they are not said to have been affected with leprosy.

The only thing that can be gathered from the signs mentioned in Leviticus 14:37 is, that the house-leprosy was an evil which calls to mind "the vegetable formations and braid-like structures that are found on mouldering walls and decaying walls, and which eat into them so as to produce a slight depression in the surface." (Note: Cf. Sommer (p. 220), who says, "The crust of many of these lichens is so marvellously thin, that they simply appear as coloured spots, for the most part circular, which gradually spread in a concentric form, and can be rubbed off like dust. Some species have a striking resemblance to eruptions upon the skin. There is one genus called spiloma (spots); and another very numerous genus bears the name of lepraria.")

[Reformed Biblical] 19 Leviticus 14:20 Leviticus 14:21 Leviticus 14:22 Leviticus 14:23 Leviticus 14:24 Leviticus 14:25 Leviticus 14:26 Leviticus 14:27 Leviticus 14:28 Leviticus 14:29 Leviticus 14:30 Leviticus 14:31 Leviticus 14:32 Leviticus 14:33 Leviticus 14:34 Leviticus 14:35 Leviticus 14:36 ## That they empty the house, i.e. the possessors of the house. It is observable here, that neither the people nor the household stuff were polluted till the leprosy was disco vered and declared by the priest, to show what great difference God makes between sins of ignorance, and sins against knowledge and conscience. Leviticus 14:37 ## In the walls of the house this was an extraordinary judgment of God peculiar to this people, either as a punishment of their sins, which were much more si nful and inexcusable than the sins of other nations; or as a special mean and help to repentance, which God afforded to them above other people; or as a document of the mischievous nature of sin, typified by leprosy, which did not only destroy persons, but their habitations also: see Zec_5:4. ## With hollow strakes, such as were in the bodies of leprous persons, Lev_13:3. Leviticus 14:38 Leviticus 14:39 Leviticus 14:40 Where they used to cast dirt and filthy things. Leviticus 14:41 The mortar or other rubbish. Levitic