Leviticus14chapter 14

Leviticus 14:1-3

Chapter 13 ordered no treatment and ended by putting the man outside the camp, and this chapter opens with the plague already healed. The priest goes forth out of the camp to look at him, because a man shut out cannot come in to be examined. Verse 2 calls this the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing, and Luke 17:14 sends ten healed men to it when Jesus tells them to go shew themselves unto the priests.

Leviticus 14:4-5

The priest calls for two birds alive and clean, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop, and those last three appear together again at Numbers 19:6, cast into the fire of the red heifer. One bird is killed in an earthen vessel over running water, water the Hebrew calls living, so blood and spring water are mixed before anything is sprinkled. Hyssop is what Israel used to put the passover blood on the door posts at Exodus 12:22, and it is the plant David asks for at Psalm 51:7.

Leviticus 14:6-7

The living bird is dipped in the blood of the dead one and let loose into the open field, and the man is sprinkled seven times and pronounced clean. One creature dies and the other carries the mark of that death away alive, which is the shape of the two goats at 16:8-22 in miniature. Adam Clarke calls the released bird a scape-bird on that ground. All of it happens outside the camp, before the man has leave to walk back in.

Leviticus 14:8-9

shave off all his hair: The cleansing comes in stages. He washes his clothes, shaves off all his hair and bathes, and that admits him to the camp while he still waits seven days outside his own tent. On the seventh day he shaves a second time, head and beard and eyebrows and all his hair, washes again, and then he is clean. Three thresholds are crossed in eight days, the camp, the tent and the door of the tabernacle.

Leviticus 14:10-13

The eighth day brings four offerings for one man, a trespass offering, a sin offering, a burnt offering and a meat offering, and with them a log of oil. The log is a measure named nowhere else in Scripture, and it belongs to this rite alone. The trespass offering leads, though that offering elsewhere answers a wrong that needs restitution at 5:15-16, and the fault recorded against this man is an illness. Matthew 8:4 points a healed leper at this passage, offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

Leviticus 14:14-20

Blood goes on the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand and the great toe of the right foot. The other place in the law that puts blood on those three points is the consecration of the priests at Exodus 29:20 and Leviticus 8:23-24, so a man shut out of the camp comes back marked where a priest is marked. Oil follows on the same three points, laid on the blood, and the rest of it is poured on his head as Aaron was anointed at 8:12. Atonement is said over him three times in three verses, and verse 20 closes the rite by saying he shall be clean.

Leviticus 14:21-32

Twelve verses run the whole rite again for a man who cannot afford it, and no step of the ceremony is dropped. Two of the three lambs become two turtledoves or two young pigeons and the flour falls from three tenth deals to one, while the log of oil, the waving, the seven sprinklings and the blood on ear, thumb and toe stand exactly as before. The animal that poverty never removes is the lamb of the trespass offering. Matthew Henry notes that the same ceremony was used for the poor as for the rich.

Leviticus 14:33-36

This law is dated forward to a country Israel has not entered, since tents in the wilderness have no stone walls to hold a plague. The LORD says I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession, and it is the one place in these two chapters where the affliction is claimed in the first person. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record that some readers take that as a judgment sent on the owner while others read it as the ordinary way Scripture speaks of what God permits, and Adam Clarke takes the second reading. The house is emptied before the priest walks in, so its contents are spared, and nothing inside counts unclean until he has looked and spoken.

Leviticus 14:37-45

The vocabulary of the man's case is now applied to masonry, shut up seven days, spread, unclean. If the plague has spread the infected stones are pulled out and thrown into an unclean place outside the city, the walls are scraped, the dust is carried out, and new stones and fresh morter go in. A house is given a repair that no man in chapter 13 was offered. If the plague breaks out again after all of that, the text calls it a fretting leprosy and the whole house is broken down and carried out of the city.

Leviticus 14:46-53

Whoever goes into the shut-up house is unclean until the even, and whoever lies down or eats there washes his clothes, so the building hands its condition to the people who use it. If the plague has not spread after the plastering the priest pronounces the house clean because the plague is healed, and the two birds, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop are brought out a second time. The living bird is let go out of the city into the open fields, and verse 53 says the priest shall make an atonement for the house. Atonement is made for a building here, and the same is done for the holy place itself at 16:16.

Leviticus 14:54-57

These four verses gather chapters 13 and 14 into one law, naming the leprosy of a man, of a garment and of a house, with the scall, the rising, the scab and the bright spot. The two chapters run 116 verses together, longer than the day of atonement chapter and longer than the law of any single offering. Verse 57 states the purpose as teaching when it is unclean, and when it is clean, so the law closes as an instrument of judgment rather than of healing.