Leviticuschapter 13
59 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
He shall be shaven, but the scall shall he not shave; and the priest shall shut up him that hath the scall seven days more:
Introduction
Moses, by tradition, The Law, Leviticus Overview.
Moses received this long law for a camp with no physicians of its own and a sanctuary standing in its middle. The priest serves here as the examiner, and his work is to look carefully and to wait before he rules. The first hearers dreaded these marks on the skin, because a verdict could send a person to live outside the camp. Listen for how often the priest looks again after seven days, and for the signs he weighs. Notice that the same law reaches a garment as well as a body. Read the chapter beside the Gospel scenes where Jesus touches such a man.
Context
- Who
- A camp in which an affliction of the skin could put a man outside the boundary for as long as it lasted
- What
- A law for the priest's examination of swellings, rashes and spots on the skin and scalp, and of marks in cloth and leather.
- Where
- Wherever the priest examined a person in the camp, and the ground outside it where the unclean lived.
- When
- The second year after the Exodus, about 1445 BC on the traditional dating.
- Why
- To keep the camp where the LORD dwelt clean, and to have the priest rule with care before he shut anyone out.
Historical context
The speech is addressed to Moses and to Aaron together, which is the pattern across these laws at 11:1, 13:1 and 14:33, because a priest has to give the verdict.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The Hebrew word is tsara'ath, and it occurs here for the first time in Scripture. It covers a range of skin conditions wider than the disease the English word leprosy now names, and the same word is applied in this chapter to a garment and in the next to the walls of a house, which no illness of people would explain.
A first hearer knew that the man in front of the priest was not being treated. Nothing is prescribed anywhere in fifty-nine verses. The priest looks, and what he is given to do is decide and say.
He also knew what the seven days meant in a camp. Isolation was a real cost in a community where food, water and work were shared, and the chapter imposes it twice over on a doubtful case before any verdict is given.
The signs the priest looks for were visible to anyone: hair turned white inside the patch, a sore that looks deeper than the skin, raw flesh, spreading, and on the head or in the beard, yellow hair against black. The man was shaved everywhere except the patch itself so the priest kept the evidence and cleared the ground around it.
Verses 45 and 46 describe a life a first hearer could picture: torn clothes, uncovered head, a covering over the upper lip, the man's own voice calling out, and a dwelling alone outside the camp.
Significance
For the person examined this was the most consequential hour of his life, since the verdict decided whether he stayed inside the camp with his family or lived alone beyond it.
Show the rest of the significance, 2 more paragraphs
For the community the procedure was a public health measure written into a covenant document, and the instrument it used was time rather than medicine.
The chapter also cleared people. The verdicts fall both ways, and a freckled rash, a bald head and a bald forehead are each named in order to be pronounced clean.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The work of this chapter belonged to the priest's eye rather than to the altar. He looked at the mark, and the status followed from what he said. Once the priest declared a man unclean, the man was a settled case. His recovery later required two birds, the shaving of his body and the offering set out in the next chapter (Rashi on Leviticus 13:8:1). Rashi is quoted from the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, which the corpus marks public domain. The tradition fixes the marks he was looking for. Two hairs that were dark and turned white inside the patch are the sign the third verse names (Rashi on Leviticus 13:3:1). Live flesh showing inside a white patch is a second sign, and the tradition extends it from the one shade the verse names to every shade of white (Rashi on Leviticus 13:10:1). A minimum size is set at a split bean. A patch of half that size in a boil could not be added to one of half that size in a burn to reach it (Rashi on Leviticus 13:24:1). The rite that ends the uncleanness needs the sanctuary, and no sanctuary has stood since AD 70, a break this site records on its feasts layer (src/lib/hebraic/feasts.ts).
How it is read
The reading here is patient and physical, and it admits its own limits. On the fourth verse, where the patch is said to be no deeper than the skin, Rashi writes plainly that he does not know what the phrase means (Rashi on Leviticus 13:4:1). On the twentieth verse he explains the appearance of depth by light rather than by measurement. The patch is not truly lower, and its whiteness makes it look lower, as a lit surface looks deeper than a shaded one (Rashi on Leviticus 13:20:1).
The names of the marks are read as a scale of colour. The words of the second verse are held to name plagues that differ by being whiter one than the next (Rashi on Leviticus 13:2:1). A spot called reddish white is read as two colours mixed rather than one (Rashi on Leviticus 13:19:1). The word for fading is read against the two outcomes it rules out, since a mark that keeps its colour or spreads leaves the man unclean (Rashi on Leviticus 13:6:1). A boil is named from heat and comes of a blow, where the mark of the later paragraph comes of fire (Rashi on Leviticus 13:18:1).
Two readings guard against a hasty verdict in either direction. Sound flesh growing over an old patch is read as a sign of the trouble underneath. The priest is told not to clear the man for it (Rashi on Leviticus 13:11:1). The opposite case is the mark standing on one of the tips of the limbs, which slope away and cannot be seen whole at once. Rashi explains the fourteenth verse as the case where such a tip thickens and flattens, so that the priest can see the live flesh at last (Rashi on Leviticus 13:14:1). Two grammatical notes sit beside these, on the gender of the words for flesh and for the mark, which decides which pronoun the verse uses (Rashi on Leviticus 13:15:1 and 13:22:1).
Ibn Ezra stands five times in this chapter, on the first, ninth, thirteenth, sixteenth and twenty first verses (Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 13:1:1, 13:9:1, 13:13:1, 13:16:1 and 13:21:1). The corpus keeps no text of him. The licence Sefaria reports forbids it on four of them, and the fetch of the first returned nothing. Malbim stands on the seventh and seventeenth, and Sefaria holds no English version of either (Malbim on Leviticus, Tazria 66:1 and 95:1).
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty Midrash and Talmud locators on this chapter and the text of none of them. Each is cited here rather than quoted, and what each teaches is reported as the teaching of the rabbis.
Twenty four are midrashic, and twenty of those are entries of Midrash Lekach Tov, which follows this chapter verse by verse. They stand at Leviticus 13:7:1, 13:11:1, 13:15:1, 13:16:1, 13:17:1, 13:19:1, 13:20:1, 13:21:1 and 13:22:1 on the first half of the chapter. They continue at 13:26:1, 13:27:1, 13:30:1, 13:31:1, 13:32:1, 13:34:1, 13:35:1, 13:38:1, 13:39:1, 13:40:1 and 13:41:1 on the second. The other four are Bamidbar Rabbah 7:8 and 6:2, Ein Yaakov, Kiddushin 1:8 in the Glick Edition, and Eikhah Rabbah 2:3.
Sixteen Talmudic locators run beside them. Arakhin carries three, at 3a:9, 18b:1 and 8b:10. The Jerusalem Talmud carries six, two of them at Megillah 1:8:3 and 1:8:1, and the rest at Nazir 8:2:1, Moed Katan 1:5:2, Pesachim 7:2:3 and Pesachim 6:1:8. Bekhorot stands twice, at 45b:5 and 17a:18. The last five stand at Megillah 8b:9, Avot DeRabbi Natan 34:5, Chullin 8a:3 on the boil, Bava Batra 84a:6 and Kiddushin 35b:13.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Leviticus 13:2:1 to 13:24:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 13:1:1, 13:9:1, 13:13:1, 13:16:1 and 13:21:1, cited by ref because the corpus keeps no text of them; Malbim, Malbim on Leviticus, Tazria 66:1 and 95:1, cited by ref because Sefaria holds no English version; MannaFest, the feasts layer, src/lib/hebraic/feasts.ts, on the Temple's fall in AD 70; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/leviticus/13.json, the 40 Midrash and Talmud locators of this chapter.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The priest looks, and shuts him up
Leviticus 13:1-3
The chapter puts a priest where a reader expects a physician and gives him nothing to prescribe. The word rendered leprosy occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the Hebrew tsara'ath covers a range of skin conditions wider than the disease that carries the English name now. Across fifty-nine verses the priest looks or sees seventeen times and no treatment is ordered anywhere, so his whole office here is to decide and to say.
Leviticus 13:1
“Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean, which was more than the priests could do, Matt. viii. Some think that the leprosy signified, not so much sin in general as a state of sin, by which men are separated from God (their spot not being the spot of God's children), and scandalous sin, for which men are to be shut out from the communion of the faithful.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Albert Barnes reads the three signs named here, a swelling, a rash and a bright spot, as technical Hebrew terms for the first visible marks of the disease. Adam Clarke traces the English word leprosy to a Greek word for a scale. He ties it to Moses' hand and to Miriam.
Leviticus 13:2
“In the skin - For there is the first seat of the leprosy, the bright spot shining like the scale of a fish, as it is in the beginning of a leprosy. The priest - The priest was to admit to, or exclude from, the sanctuary, and therefore to examine who were to be excluded.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Leviticus 13:2
“The plague of leprosy - This dreadful disorder has its name leprosy, from the Greek λεποα, from λεπις, a scale, because in this disease the body was often covered with thin white scales, so as to give it the appearance of snow. Hence it is said of the hand of Moses, Exo 4:6, that it was leprous as snow; and of Miriam, Num 12:10, that she became leprous, as white as snow; and of Gehazi, 2Ki 5:27, that, being judicially struck with the disease of Naaman, he went out from Elisha’s presence a leper as white as snow.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Leviticus 13:2
“There is every reason to believe that this was the case: that the leprosy was not a family complaint, hereditary among the Hebrews, but that they got it from intercourse with the Egyptians and from the unfavorable circumstances of their condition in the house of bondage.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The Hebrew behind pronounce him unclean reads literally as making him unclean, and Adam Clarke explains it as a declaration. The priest names a state already present in the skin. Clarke reads the binding and loosing of Matthew 16:19 through this same idiom of declaring.
Leviticus 13:3
“The hair in the plague is turned white - The sparing growth of very fine whitish hair on leprous spots in the place of the natural hair, appears to have been always regarded as a characteristic symptom. the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh - Rather The stroke appears to be deeper than the scarf skin. The bright spot changed to a brownish color with a metallic or oily luster, and with a clearly-defined edge. This symptom, along with the whitish hair, at once decided the case to be one of leprosy.”
Leviticus 13:4-8
Where the case is doubtful the answer is time. The priest shall isolate the infected person for seven days, looks again, and if nothing has changed isolates him for another seven days. Nothing is done to the sore meanwhile, so the instrument of diagnosis is waiting.
Leviticus 13:4
“Seven days - For greater assurance; to teach ministers not to be hasty in their judgments, but diligently to search and examine all things before-hand. The plague is here put for the man that hath the plague.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The second week tests one thing, whether the spot has spread. Albert Barnes renders the check as whether it has advanced, meaning whether it has gone under the outer skin and taken on the signs of verse 3. A spot that holds still earns more time instead of a verdict.
Leviticus 13:5
“And the plague spread not - Rather, advance not, so as to show that the disease is under the cuticle and assuming the symptoms of Lev 13:3.”
Albert Barnes reads the word rendered faded as growing dim, a spot dying away, and John Wesley offers contracted as a second sense. The man cleared still washes his clothes. Wesley and Matthew Henry both read that washing as a sign that even small spots need cleansing.
Leviticus 13:6
“Dark - Contrary to the white colour of the leprosy. But the word may be rendered, have contracted itself, and thus the opposition seems to be most clear as the spreading of itself. He shall wash his clothes - Though it was no leprosy, to teach us, that no sin is so small as not to need to be washed by the blood of Christ, which was the thing designed by all these washings.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Albert Barnes calls the phrase about showing himself for his cleansing doubtful. He reads it most likely as the visit at which the man was pronounced clean, while others take that first verdict as provisional, holding only until the signs return. Either way, the case can be reopened.
Leviticus 13:7
“Seen of the priest for his cleansing - The purport of these words is doubtful. They probably mean “seen by the priest and pronounced clean,” and refer to the visit of the suspected leper to the priest at the end of the second week. But some have taken the words to mean “seen by the priest with a view to be pronounced clean,” and regard the sentence of the priest as provisional, holding good only until the symptoms may appear to resume their progress. Compare Lev 13:35.”
Spreading alone settles the case here, with no mention of white hair or depth. Matthew Henry reads the rule morally. A stop in the course of a sin gives hope, and a sin that gains ground every day marks a man going downhill.
When the white covers all the flesh
Leviticus 13:9-17
The rule here runs against expectation. A man covered from head to foot is pronounced clean at verse 13, and raw flesh appearing on him makes him unclean at verse 14. What defiles is the living sore and not the extent of the whiteness, and the chapter states the rule twice without explaining it.
Leviticus 13:9
“Several of these characteristics, taken separately, belong to other blemishes of the skin as well; so that none of them was to be taken alone, and it was only when the whole of them concurred that the Jewish priest, in his capacity of physician, was to pronounce the disease a malignant leprosy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Three signs stand together here. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that each sign alone belongs to other skin complaints, so the white swelling, white hair and raw flesh decide the case only together. John Wesley and Albert Barnes read the raw flesh as an open sore, the mark of an advanced disease.
Leviticus 13:10
“If the rising be white - Or, If there be a white rising. The term very probably denotes the white Bulla or patch of Anaesthetic elephantiasis when it has re-appeared. Quick raw flesh in the rising - The margin gives the literal rendering. The symptom here noted exhibits a more advanced stage of the disease. The expression might denote an ulcer or open sore with “proud flesh” appearing in it.”
Older English versions render chronic as old, the word John Gill's heading keeps. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say the priest pronounced only when all the signs concurred, and in verse 10 they all have. So the waiting weeks of verses 4 and 5 are skipped.
Albert Barnes identifies the condition here as the common white leprosy, which spreads in circles of white scale until they meet. He says it scarcely touches the general health and often clears of itself. The limit of the search is the priest's own sight.
Leviticus 13:12
“The disease here indicated appears to be that now known as Lepra commonis, the common White Leprosy, or Dry Tetter. It first shows itself in reddish pimples, the surface of which becomes white and scaly, spreading in a circular form until they meet each other and cover large patches of the body. It scarcely affects the general health, and for the most part disappears of itself, though it often lasts for years.”
Adam Clarke asks why the total case is clean. He answers that two kinds or stages of the disease are in view, the partial one contagious and the total one harmless. Tertullian reads the whiteness as a man wholly renewed, no longer mottled with the old and the new.
Leviticus 13:13
“If the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean - Why is it that the partial leper was pronounced unclean, and the person totally covered with the disease clean? This was probably owing to a different species or stage of the disease; the partial disease was contagious, the total not contagious. That there are two different species or degrees of the same disease described here, is sufficiently evident. In one, the body was all covered with a white enamelled scurf; in the other, there was a quick raw flesh in the risings.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:13
“Thus he wished us to understand that the man who is changed from his former carnal state to the whiteness of faith (which the world considers a blemish and a stain) and who is completely renewed is clean. He is no longer spotted, no longer mottled with both the old and the new.”
Tertullian · written before 220 · ON PURITY 20.7patristic
John Gill places the raw flesh between or among the white patches. John Wesley explains why that matters. A body of one colour showed soundness, and a mixture of white and living flesh was the sign of disease.
Leviticus 13:14
“But when raw flesh appeareth in him,.... Between the white spots, scabs, or swellings, or in the midst of them: he shall be unclean; be pronounced unclean, and be subject to all the prescriptions of the law concerning lepers.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:14
“In it - That is in the place where the appearance of leprosy was, when the flesh was partly changed into a whiter colour, and partly kept its natural colour, this variety of colours was an evidence of the leprosy, as one and the same colour continuing, was a sign of soundness.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the raw flesh is unclean: The rule of verse 14 is said again from the priest's side, and John Wesley explains the repetition. Living flesh could look like healing, so the priest might be deceived and had to look closely. John Gill adds that the uncleanness is ceremonial.
Leviticus 13:15
“And the priest shall see the raw flesh,.... Or when he sees it, the person being brought to him to be viewed: and pronounce him to be unclean; or shall pronounce him to be unclean: for the raw flesh is unclean; made a man so in a ceremonial sense; See Gill on Lev 13:10, it is a leprosy; wherever any quick raw flesh appears in a swelling.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:15
“The raw flesh - This is repeated again and again, because raw or living flesh might rather seem a sign of soundness, and the priest might easily be deceived by it, and therefore he was more narrowly to look into it.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
John Gill reads the change as the red of raw flesh giving way to white, the colour of the rest of the swelling. The man still returns to the priest. The verdict belongs to the priest alone, even when the change is plain to see.
Leviticus 13:16
“Or if the raw flesh turn again,.... Changes its colour, from redness, which is in raw flesh: and be changed unto white: and does not look ruddy as flesh in common does, nor red and fiery, as raw and proud flesh, but is white, of the same colour with the swelling or scab: he shall come unto the priest; again, and show himself, even though he was before by him pronounced clean.”
The same man declared unclean at verse 15 can be declared clean two verses later. John Gill says he is then free of the laws and rites that bound a leper. The verdict can be reversed.
Leviticus 13:17
“And the priest shall see him,.... Review him, and examine him thoroughly: and, behold, if the plague be turned into white; the raw flesh in the swelling, which looked red, is become white: then the priest shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; that was supposed to have the plague of leprosy; but upon a review, and on this change of things, has not, he shall declare him free from it: he is clean; and under no obligation to the laws and rites concerning it.”
A spot where a boil or burn had been
Leviticus 13:18-28
The same procedure runs twice more for sores that begin from something else, a boil that healed and a burn. The signs looked for do not change, white hair and a depth below the skin, and the seven days return in both. The word healed occurs twice in the chapter, at verse 18 and verse 37, and in both places it describes something that got better on its own.
Leviticus 13:18
“The flesh also, in which, even in the skin thereof, was a boil,.... Or hot ulcer, by which, says Maimonides (n) you may understand any stroke by a stone, stick, or iron, or any other thing: and in the Misnah (o), it is asked, what is an ulcer (or boil)? a stroke by wood, stone, pitch, or hot water; all that is from the force of fire is an ulcer: and is healed; by the use of medicine, and the part, in all appearance, as well and as sound as ever. (n) In Misn. Negaim, c. 6. sect.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:18
“In the skin thereof, was a boil - Scheuchzer supposes this and the following verse to speak of phlegmonic, erysipelatous, gangrenous, and phagedenic ulcers, all of which were subjected to the examination of the priest, to see whether they were infectious, or whether the leprosy might not take its origin from them. A person with any sore or disposition to contagion was more likely to catch the infection by contact with the diseased person, than he was whose skin was whole and sound, and his habit good.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The site matters here. A new mark rising where an old boil had healed is examined by the same signs used in verses 3 and 4. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that such signs could belong to other blemishes, so no one sign decided the case alone.
Albert Barnes renders beneath the skin as reaching below the outer layer, the scarf skin. The test is depth, paired with white hair. A scar from a healed boil stays on the surface, and a disease that breaks out in it goes deeper.
Leviticus 13:20
“Lower than the skin - Rather, reaching below the scarf skin.”
Each of the three signs is checked and found absent here, with no white hair, no depth, and a faded spot. The priest still waits seven days. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say the verdict rested on all the signs together, and a week shows whether they will gather.
After the week of waiting, spreading alone decides the case. The verse names no other sign. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown hold that the signs of the disease were weighed together, and here the growth of the spot over seven days is counted as enough.
Albert Barnes renders the phrase literally as the burn of the ulcer, the mark an old sore leaves behind. John Gill says the man is clear of the leprosy law even with inflammation still present. A scar that stays put is left alone.
Leviticus 13:23
“But if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not,.... Continues as it was when first viewed: it is a burning boil; but not a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall pronounce him clean; as clear of a leprosy, and so not bound by the law of it, though attended with an inflammation or burning ulcer.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:23
A burning boil - Rather, the scar of the ulcer; literally, “the burn of the ulcer.”
John Wesley takes the burn literally, a wound from hot iron or burning coals. Albert Barnes reads the verse as skin inflamed by the burn, where the sore has become a glossy spot. The inspection used for the boil follows.
Leviticus 13:24
“A hot burning - A burning of fire, by the touch of any hot- iron, or burning coals, which naturally makes an ulcer or sore in which the following spot is.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The signs used for the boil at verse 20 are applied to the burn without change, white hair and depth below the skin. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say only these signs together settled the case. A wound from fire is judged like any other.
John Gill notes that older English versions add the word other to this verse and says he sees no reason for it. He renders faded as dark or contracted, as at verse 21. The seven days follow as for the boil.
Leviticus 13:26
“But if the priest look on it,.... On the hot burning and bright spot in it, in another person: and, behold, there be no white hair on the white spot, and it be no lower than the other skin; why the word "other" should be supplied I know not, any more than in Lev 13:21, but be somewhat dark; or "contracted"; see Gill on Lev 13:21, then the priest shall shut him up seven days; as in the case of the burning boil or hot ulcer, as in Lev 13:21.”
The seventh day decides the burn case as it decided the boil case at verse 22. Spreading is the sign that settles it. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that the priest pronounced a true case only when the marks of the disease concurred, and the week of waiting lets the last of them show.
Albert Barnes renders the closing words as the mere hurt of the inflammation. The chapter ends the burn case as it ended the boil case at verse 23. Injury is kept apart from disease.
Leviticus 13:28
“And if the glossy spot continues unchanged and makes no advance in the skin, and is rather indistinct” (see the note at Lev 13:6), “it is the mark of the inflammation, and the priest shall pronounce him clean, for it is the (mere) hurt of inflammation.”
Plague in the head or the beard
Leviticus 13:29-37
A plague on the head or in the beard is judged by the colour of hair, yellow against black. The man is shaven everywhere except the patch itself, so the priest keeps the evidence and clears the ground around it. Black hair growing up in it at verse 37 is the sign that the thing is healed, and the priest pronounces him clean.
Leviticus 13:29
“If a man or a woman hath a plague upon the head or the beard. Any breaking out in those parts a swelling, scab, or spot, on a man's beard or on a woman's head; or on the head of either man or woman; or on a woman's beard, if she had any, as some have had though not common.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:29
“A plague upon the head or the beard - This refers to a disease in which, according to the Jews, the hair either on the head or the chin dropped out by the roots.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
John Wesley notes that the disease turned hair white on the body and yellow on the head or beard. A man already fair could be judged by the thinness of the hair. Albert Barnes would keep the Hebrew name netheq.
Leviticus 13:30
“A yellow, thin hair - The leprosy in the body turned the hair white, in the head or beard it turned it yellow. And if a man's hair was yellow before, this might easily be distinguished from the rest, either by the thinness or smallness of it, or by its peculiar kind of yellow, for there are divers kinds of the same colour manifestly differing from one another.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:30
“Scall - As this is the name for another disease not allied to the leprosy, it would have been better to retain the original word נתק netheq. It is a true elephantiasis, and is recognized by modern writers under the name of the Fox mange.”
there is no black hair in it: John Wesley reads black hair as a sign of soundness that would have ended the doubt at once. Albert Barnes thinks the verse more probably means yellow hair, which would match verse 32. The difference turns on one word.
Leviticus 13:31
“There is no black hair in it More probably, there is no yellow hair in it.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:31
“No black hair - For had that appeared, it had ended the doubt, the black hair being a sign of soundness and strength of nature, as the yellow hair was a sign of unsoundness.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Three checks are run again at the end of the first week, spreading, yellow hair and depth. All three must come back clear before the next step. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say the case was judged on the signs together, and this verse lists them together.
Adam Clarke gives the reason the patch itself is left unshaved. A razor could irritate and inflame it and give it a look the disease had not caused. The priest would then be unable to judge it.
Leviticus 13:33
“The scall shall he not shave - Lest the place should be irritated and inflamed, and assume in consequence other appearances besides those of a leprous infection; in which case the priest might not be able to form an accurate judgment.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The scaly case clears on the same terms as the rash at verse 6, and the washing of clothes follows here as it does there. Two weeks and a shaving stand behind the verdict. Matthew Henry turns the chapter into a reason to thank God for a healthy body.
after his cleansing: John Gill reads after his cleansing as after the priest has pronounced him clean. He grants that a spread could still come despite all the care and time taken. Gill compares 2 Peter 1:9, on forgetting a past cleansing.
Leviticus 13:35
“But if the scall spread much in his skin after cleansing. After he has been declared clean by the priest; for it was possible that it might spread after this, though so much precaution had been used, and so much time taken to observe it: with this compare 2Pe 1:9.”
John Gill counts this as at least the fourth inspection of the same man. Pronounced clean or not, he stays under the priest's eye. Gill reads spreading and yellow hair as each enough alone, so one sign found makes the search for the other needless.
Leviticus 13:36
“Then the priest shall look on him,.... Again, and which is no less than the fourth time; for notwithstanding his being pronounced clean, he was still subject to the inspection of the priest, if any alteration appeared: and, behold, if the scall be spread in the skin; which was a certain sign of a leprosy: the priest shall not seek for yellow hair; or be solicitous about that, whether there is any or not, for either one or the other of these signs were sufficient to determine the case: he is unclean; and so to be pronounced.”
Albert Barnes renders the first condition as a spot that does not alter in appearance. Two things are required together, a spot that holds still and new black hair growing in it. The priest then declares what the hair already shows.
Leviticus 13:37
“Be in his sight at a stay - Or, Does not alter in appearance.”
Bright spots, bald heads, and the cry Unclean
Leviticus 13:38-44
Three conditions are named here only to be cleared: dull white spots, a bald head and a bald forehead. The chapter says he is still clean twice in two verses. The procedure clears people as well as excluding them, and the priest's word of clean carries the same weight as his word of unclean.
Leviticus 13:38
“If a man also, or a woman,.... One or the other, for the law concerning leprosy respecteth both: have in the skin of their flesh bright spots; and them only; not any rising or swelling, nor scab, nor scall, nor boil, nor burning, only bright spots, a sort of freckles or morphew: even white bright spots; these, Ben Gersom observes, are white spots, but not plagues; and which were in whiteness inferior to the four species of the plague of leprosy, the white spot, the white swelling, and the scab of each.”
Albert Barnes takes the Hebrew bôhaq here as some kind of eczema, harmless and similar in look. He also observes that verses 38 and 39 would sit more naturally between verses 17 and 18. The dull colour is what clears it.
Leviticus 13:39
“Freckled spot - If Lev 13:12 refers to the Lepra commonis, the Hebrew בהק bôhaq here may denote some kind of eczema, a skin disease of a somewhat similar external character. Lev 13:38, Lev 13:39 would seem more in their natural place between Lev 13:17-18.”
Leviticus 13:40
Hair loss by itself leaves a man clean. Matthew Henry points to Elisha at 2 Kings 2:23, mocked for his bald head by the children of Bethel. Henry lays the fault on the mockers, since the law had declared baldness clean.
Leviticus 13:42
Albert Barnes notes that the word rendered sore is the same word the chapter elsewhere renders plague, a stroke. The bare scalp is clean, and a reddish-white mark on it is judged as disease. Colour decides here.
Leviticus 13:42
“Sore - Rather, stroke. It is the same word which elsewhere in this and the next chapter is rendered plague.”
The verse states the verdict twice, that he is unclean and that he must be pronounced unclean. Matthew Henry reads the head as the seat of judgment. For him a corruption of belief is the hardest uncleanness to cleanse.
Leviticus 13:44
“If the leprosy of sin have seized the head, if the judgment be corrupted, and wicked principles which countenance and support wicked practices, be embraced, it is an utter uncleanness, from which few are ever cleansed. Soundness in the faith keeps the leprosy from the head, and saves conscience from being shipwrecked.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Leviticus 13:45-46
These two verses are the only place in the chapter that says how the man then lives. Rent clothes, a bare head, a covering upon the upper lip, his own voice calling Unclean, unclean, and a dwelling alone outside the camp. Luke 17:12 has ten lepers standing afar off in obedience to this verse, and Mark 1:41 has Jesus putting out his hand and touching one.
Leviticus 13:45
“As to "the putting a covering upon the upper lip," that means either wearing a moustache, as the Hebrews used to shave the upper lip [CALMET], or simply keeping a hand over it. All these external marks of grief were intended to proclaim, in addition to his own exclamation "Unclean!" that the person was a leper, whose company every one must shun.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:45
“And this was all that the law could do, in that it was weak through the flesh; it taught the leper to cry, Unclean, unclean, but the gospel has put another cry into the lepers' mouths, Luke xvii. 12, 13 , where we find ten lepers crying with a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. The law only shows us our disease; the gospel shows us our help in Christ.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Albert Barnes renders alone as apart and points to 2 Kings 7:3 and Luke 17:12, where lepers are found together. Matthew Henry adds King Uzziah, who lived in a separate house after he became a leper. John Wesley gives humiliation and infection as reasons.
When the plague is in cloth or leather
Leviticus 13:47-52
The same word is then used of a garment, which has no skin and cannot fall ill. Wool, linen, warp, woof and anything made of skin are shut up seven days and looked at again on the same schedule as a man. A spreading plague in cloth is burnt whole, and Leviticus 14:33-53 will run the procedure again on the stones of a house.
Leviticus 13:47
“The garments also, that the plague of leprosy is in,.... Whether this sort of leprosy proceeded from natural causes, or was extraordinary and miraculous, and came immediately from the hand of God, and was peculiar to the Jews, and unknown to other nations, is a matter of question; the latter is generally asserted by the Hebrew writers, as Maimonides (e), Abraham Seba (f), and others (g); but others are of opinion, and Abarbinel among the Jews, that it might be by the contact or touch of a leprous person.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:47
“The garment - Rather, The clothing, referring to the ordinary dress of the Israelites in the wilderness; namely,, a linen tunic with a fringe Num 15:38 and a woolen cloak or blanket thrown on in colder weather.”
Albert Barnes reads the terms as yarn prepared for the warp and yarn prepared for the woof. John Wesley reports a rendering of the same words as the outside and the inside of the cloth. He grants the terms are doubtful.
Leviticus 13:48
Rather, “And the clothing in which there is a stroke of leprosy, whether the stroke is in clothing of wool or in clothing of linen; or in yarn for warp or in yarn for woof, either for linen clothing or for woolen clothing; or in a skin of leather or in any article made of leather.”
The sign for cloth and leather is colour, green or red. Fabric has no hair and no depth, so colour takes their place. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown praise the precision of these rules for telling one kind of plague from another.
John Gill takes the plague the priest examines to be the green or red spot of verse 49. The article is set aside as it was found for the week. What the priest wants to learn is whether the mark moves.
Leviticus 13:50
“And the priest shall look upon the plague,.... The green or red spot in the garment, &c. and shut up it that hath the plague seven days; the woollen or linen garment, the warp or the woof, or skins, and those things that were made of them.”
Albert Barnes renders the older word fretting as malignant or corroding. He thinks the green and red spots were most likely a destructive mildew and admits the kind cannot be fixed. John Gill says a change of colour mattered less than a spread.
Leviticus 13:51
“A fretting leprosy - i. e. a malignant or corroding leprosy. What was the nature of the leprosy in clothing, which produced greenish or reddish spots, cannot be precisely determined. It was most likely destructive mildew, perhaps of more than one kind.”
Adam Clarke explains the burning by the want of any means to cure the cloth. He cites garments that passed on the itch six or seven years after they were first infected. Fire ends the risk.
Leviticus 13:52
“He shall therefore burn that garment - There being scarcely any means of radically curing the infection. It is well known that the garments infected by the psora, or itch animal, have been known to communicate the disease even six or seven years after the first infection. This has been also experienced by the sorters of rags at some paper mills.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Leviticus 13:53-59
Fabric where the mildew has not spread is washed and isolated again, and a faded section is cut out. Where washing works, it is to be washed again, and it will be clean, a remedy no man in this chapter was offered. Verse 59 closes the passage as the law concerning a mildew contamination, for pronouncing it clean or unclean.
Leviticus 13:53
“And if the priest shall look,.... On the seventh day as before, after shutting up: and, behold, the plague be not spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything of skin; but is at an entire stay, that it may be hoped it is not a fretting leprosy: so when men do not proceed to more ungodliness, as wicked men commonly do, but there is a stop put to their vicious life and conversation, it is an hopeful sign of future good.”
Leviticus 13:54
The garment that held still gets a washing and a second week. Adam Clarke says the extra days gave any contagion time to spread, so the proof would be past doubt. The priest orders the washing, and others carry it out.
Leviticus 13:54
“He shall shut it up seven days more - To give time for the spreading of the contagion, if it did exist there; that there might be the most unequivocal marks and proofs that the garment was or was not infected.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Albert Barnes renders the faded mark as somewhat faint and compares verse 6, the same word used of a fading rash on a man. A faded mark is cut out, and the rest of the article is kept. Partial loss saves the whole.
Leviticus 13:56
“Somewhat dark - Rather, somewhat faint. Compare Lev 13:6.”
Albert Barnes observes that no rite or offering is prescribed for cloth, only the priest's decision whether decay is at work. Paterius reads the returning mark as guilt that finds its way into a person's other acts. A mark that returns is burned.
Leviticus 13:57
“Either - in these verses, should be or. See Lev 13:47, Lev 13:49. It should be noticed that no religious or symbolic rite is prescribed for leprosy in clothing. The priest had only to decide whether the process of decay was at work in the article presented to him and to pronounce accordingly. Compare the leprosy in houses, Lev. 14:33-53.”
Adam Clarke reports the Jewish reading of the two washings. The first put the plague away, and the second made the article clean. Clarke adds that Jews and Gentiles alike took leprosy as an emblem of sin.
Leviticus 13:58
“It shall be washed the second time - According to the Jews the first washing was to put away the plague, the second to cleanse it. Both among Jews and Gentiles the leprosy has been considered as a most expressive emblem of sin, the properties and circumstances of the one pointing out those of the other. The similitude or parallel has been usually run in the following manner: - 1. The leprosy began with a spot, a simple hidden infection being the cause. 2. This spot was very conspicuous, and argued the source whence it proceeded.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 13:58
“The signification also was much the same, to intimate the great malignity there is in sin: it not only defiles the sinner's conscience, but it brings a stain upon all his employments and enjoyments, all he has and all he does. To those that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, Tit. i.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
John Gill reads the closing verse as the rule book for garments of wool, linen and skin. He glosses the two verdicts as declaring the article free of the plague or infected with it. The article is then dealt with accordingly.
Leviticus 13:59
“This is the law of the plague of leprosy,.... The rules by which it was to be judged of; whether or no it was in a garment of woollen, or linen, either the warp or woof, or any thing of skins; which include everything in which this sort of leprosy was: to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean; either to declare it free from the plague of the leprosy, or as infected with it, and so accordingly dispose of it.”
How this psalm is built
The form: Ritual instruction in the form of a diagnostic procedure, the longest single case in the purity section, as Wenham classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Seven days, and seven days again | Where the case is doubtful the answer is time. The priest isolates the person for seven days and looks again, and if it is still doubtful he isolates them seven days more. Nothing is done to the sore during those days, so the instrument of diagnosis is waiting, and the chapter runs the same seven-day pattern eight times over, on skin, on a boil, on a burn, on the head and beard, and on cloth.Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, 1864 to 1870, on Leviticus 13:4 to 8. | Leviticus 13:4, Leviticus 13:5, Leviticus 13:21, Leviticus 13:26, Leviticus 13:31, Leviticus 13:50 |
| The priest examines, and the priest pronounces | The word priest stands fifty-seven times in the chapter and the verb to examine seventeen times, counted over the Berean text in the store. No treatment is ordered anywhere in fifty-nine verses. The office here is entirely to look, to decide and to say, which is why a reader who comes to the chapter expecting medicine finds a courtroom.Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, 1864 to 1870, on Leviticus 13:1 to 3. | Leviticus 13:3, Leviticus 13:8, Leviticus 13:17, Leviticus 13:44 |
| The rule that runs the wrong way | A man covered with the condition from head to foot is pronounced clean at verse 13, and one patch of raw flesh appearing in him makes him unclean at verse 14. What defiles is the living sore rather than the extent of the whiteness. The chapter states the rule twice and explains it nowhere. | Leviticus 13:12, Leviticus 13:13, Leviticus 13:14, Leviticus 13:15 |
| The same procedure carried to cloth | From verse 47 the word is used of a garment, which has no skin and cannot fall ill. Wool, linen, warp, weft and anything of leather are isolated seven days and examined again on exactly the schedule set for a man. A garment that does not spread is washed, and only the part that keeps the mark is torn out, so cloth is offered a remedy that no person in the chapter is offered.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1831, on Leviticus 13:47. | Leviticus 13:47, Leviticus 13:50, Leviticus 13:54, Leviticus 13:56 |
The chapter stands with chapter 14 as one law. The two run 116 verses together, which is longer than the Day of Atonement chapter and longer than the law of any single offering, and 14:54 to 57 gathers them under one closing formula. A reader who takes chapter 13 alone gets the exclusion without the return.
12 more paragraphs on the patterns
The seven-day isolation is the chapter's own instrument, and it is the earliest quarantine procedure recorded in any legal text that has come down to us. The priest is given no medicine and no ritual to perform on the sore, and what he does instead is separate, wait and look again.
The historical value
The procedure assumes a settled camp with an inside and an outside, a priesthood available to individuals rather than only to the sanctuary, and clothing of wool, linen and leather. The isolation of verses 4 and 5 is a public health measure written into a covenant document, and it is one of the reasons Leviticus has been read by historians of medicine as well as by theologians.
The identification of tsara'ath is itself a historical question. The chapter's signs, white hair in the patch, depth below the surface, raw flesh, spreading, and the recovery recorded at verse 37, do not match the clinical course of Hansen's disease, which is the condition the English word leprosy now names. The same Hebrew term is applied to fabric in this chapter and to the walls of a house in chapter 14, which no infectious disease of people would explain.
The New Testament's use
Luke 17:12 has ten men with the condition standing at a distance, which is verse 46 kept. Mark 1:41 has Jesus reaching out his hand and touching one of them, which is the reverse of everything this chapter arranges, and Mark 1:44 then sends the man to the priest with the offering Moses commanded, which is chapter 14. Matthew 8:2 to 4 records the same sequence.
The debated point
What tsara'ath was is argued and the positions are held by named scholars. Keil and Delitzsch treat it as a genuine and serious disease of the skin, and read the chapter's signs as clinical. A second position, common among modern translators and reflected in versions that render the term as a defiling skin disease, holds that the word names a category of ritual impurity that takes in several unrelated conditions, on the ground that the same word is used of cloth and of masonry. A third position, older and now held by few, identifies it with Hansen's disease directly.
The strongest objection to the clinical reading is the use of the same term for a garment and a house. The strongest objection to the purely ritual reading is that the chapter's signs are physical and specific, and that verse 37 records a real recovery. Adam Clarke and John Gill both work the signs as physical while allowing that the term reaches further than one illness.
A second dispute is what verses 12 and 13 mean, where full covering is pronounced clean. Readings offered include a condition that has run its course and is no longer active, a scaling that is a different complaint altogether, and a deliberate rule that makes the living sore the point rather than the extent. The chapter states the rule twice and gives no ground for it.
Where to go deeper
The man's exile to the far side of the camp is set out at outside the camp. The condition as the Gospels handle it is set out at Naaman the leper and at healing. The category the chapter works in belongs to the owed page on the clean and the unclean.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1979, the partition this site's Leviticus dossier carries as proposed under his name, which runs the purity section from 11:1 to 15:33; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on Leviticus 14:54 and Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, 1864 to 1870, on Leviticus 13:59.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Paterius, EXPOSITION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT, LEVITICUS 11 and Tertullian, ON PURITY 20.7.