The Priest Must Look Again

Aaron is addressed with Moses again, as in 11:1. The long instruction that follows is a manual for priests, and every verdict in it is spoken by one: nobody pronounces himself clean or unclean in this chapter.

Three technical words open the chapter: se’eth, a swelling or rising; sappachath, a scab or eruption; and bahereth, a bright or shiny spot. Plague is nega‘, literally a stroke or touch. The sufferer shall be brought, a passive verb that suggests someone else has often noticed first.

Two signs together settle the first case: hair in the patch turned white, and the patch looking deeper than the surrounding skin. The Hebrew says in sight, as it appears, so the priest judges by appearance alone. He does not touch, treat or prescribe; he looks twice in one verse and speaks.

Shut up is hisgir, from sagar, the root used when the LORD shut Noah into the ark (Genesis 7:16). The spot is white but shallow and the hair unchanged, so neither sign is present. The response to incomplete evidence is a week of quarantine.

At a stay translates a phrase meaning it has stood still in the priest’s eyes. No growth and no retreat, so the case is neither closed nor escalated, and the priest adds another seven days. Fourteen days is the longest this first procedure runs.

Somewhat dark means faded or dim, the colour going out of the spot. It is but a scab, mispachath, a harmless eruption. Even a clean verdict ends with washing the clothes, since two weeks under suspicion leave their own residue to be dealt with.

The case can reopen. Seen of the priest for his cleansing refers to the clean verdict of verse 6; a spot that spreads afterwards is brought back. A pronouncement once made is not treated as beyond revision when the body shows something new.

The shortest verdict yet. Spreading, pasah, is the single sign that turns the doubtful case into the defined one, and the priest names it without further delay: it is a leprosy. The waiting of verses 4 to 7 has done its work.

A new case begins with a fresh heading, the plague already in a man. The opening verb is again passive, he shall be brought, as though the community delivers him to the priest rather than the man coming forward of his own accord.

Quick raw flesh is michyat basar chai, literally a sign of living flesh: exposed, raw tissue. Quick is old English for alive, as in the quick and the dead. White swelling, whitened hair and raw flesh together make the fullest set of signs in the chapter.

Old leprosy is nosheneth, an aged or chronic condition, one that has been there long enough to be clear at first sight. For that reason the priest shall not shut him up. Waiting exists to resolve doubt, and where there is none, the week is not imposed.

From his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh: the scope is total, and the priest inspects the whole body. The phrase is built to leave no uncovered patch of skin that could complicate the verdict of the next verse.

The surprising ruling. Complete whiteness, with no raw flesh anywhere, is pronounced clean. The priest shall consider is the same verb for seeing used throughout; he looks and concludes. Miriam’s skin was white as snow (Numbers 12:10), but she was shut out of the camp; the whiteness alone was not the test.

One sign reverses everything. The Hebrew says on the day raw flesh appears, so the change is immediate, not held over for another week. Six words in the English turn the clean man of verse 13 unclean.

The priest sees before he speaks, and the reason is given in the verdict itself: for the raw flesh is unclean. The ruling rests on the tissue, not on the person’s history or conduct, and ends with the chapter’s recurring label, it is a leprosy.

Turn again is the ordinary Hebrew verb for returning, shuv. The raw flesh can go back to white, and when it does, the man himself comes to the priest. For once he is the subject of the verb, coming rather than being brought.

The case closes where verse 13 did, with the whole body white and the man pronounced clean. The three verses from 14 to 17 show the same person moving from clean to unclean and back again as the skin changes.

A boil, shechin, is the word for the boils of the sixth plague in Exodus 9:9 and for the sores that covered Job (Job 2:7). The sentence opens on a body that has already healed; the question is only what the healed place now shows.

White, and somewhat reddish renders lavan adamdameth, the doubled form adamdam meaning pinkish, a faint red. The spot is shewed to the priest: in 1611 English shew is the older spelling of show, and the whole chapter runs on things being shown and seen.

Lower than the skin says what verse 3 said with deeper: the patch sits beneath the surrounding surface. Broken out of the boil names the origin: the condition has blossomed from the old wound, using the verb parach, to bud or break out, the word used of blossoming plants.

No white hairs, not sunken, and faded: all three warning signs are missing, so the patch gets the single week of watching. Unlike verse 5, no second week is prescribed for the boil case; one inspection after seven days decides it.

Spread much abroad is the doubled phrase pasoh tifseh, spreading it spreads, a Hebrew way of stressing that the growth is plain. The verdict is shorter than any before it: it is a plague, the bare word nega‘ without further label.

A burning boil is tsarebeth hashechin, the scar of the boil. Tsarebeth comes from a verb for scorching, and the idea is a puckered mark like the tightened skin left by heat. It stays where it is, and staying is the sign of an old wound, not an active condition.

The second origin is a burn, mikvath esh, literally a burning of fire. Quick flesh that burneth is the raw tissue of the healing wound. Burns were common in households built around open hearths and clay ovens, so this was a practical case, not a rare one.

The signs are the same as for the boil: whitened hair and depth. Wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean ties the verdict tightly to the evidence, and the sentence is laid out in the order of the inspection, seeing first, reasoning second, pronouncing last.

The burn case mirrors verse 21 almost word for word. The Hebrew law often states parallel cases in full rather than saying likewise, so that a priest reading any one paragraph has the whole procedure in front of him without needing to cross-reference.

On the seventh day comes the one inspection, as the boil received. Spread much abroad settles the burn as unclean. The term here is the full phrase, plague of leprosy, where verse 22 said only plague.

An inflammation of the burning is tsarebeth hamikvah, the scar of the burn, the same word as the burning boil in verse 23. The Hebrew uses the exact term twice so that the two healed injuries are recognised as belonging to one class: scars, and clean.

A man or woman: the first time the chapter names women explicitly. The head and the beard are hairy places where the earlier sign of whitening hair cannot work the same way, so a separate procedure is needed.

A dry scall is netheq, from a verb meaning to tear out or pull away, probably a condition that makes hair fall out in patches. Scall was a common English word for scabby disease of the scalp. The warning sign changes: thin yellow hair, where the skin cases looked for white.

No black hair in it: the Hebrew text here reads black, which puzzles many commentators, since yellow was the sign in verse 30. Some suggest the text originally read yellow. The King James follows the Hebrew as it stands, and the procedure is the usual seven days.

Three conditions must be met at the seventh day: not spread, no yellow hair, not deeper than the skin. It is the most thorough checklist in the chapter so far, laid out before the procedure unique to hair that follows in the next verse.

He shall be shaven, but the scall shall he not shave. The hair around the patch is removed so its edges can be seen clearly next time, while the patch itself keeps its hair for inspection. It is a practical measure that makes the second look reliable.

After two weeks, the patch that has neither spread nor sunk is declared clean. The ending repeats verse 6 exactly, wash his clothes and be clean, the same two steps back into ordinary life whatever part of the body was under suspicion.

The warning of verse 7 returns for the scalp. After his cleansing means after the verdict of verse 34. A spreading patch after a clean ruling sends the person back, and the ruling is reopened.

The priest shall not seek for yellow hair: once spreading is seen, the other sign becomes irrelevant. The instruction limits the inspection; he is not to go hunting for secondary evidence when the decisive sign is already in front of him.

Black hair grown up in the patch is the sign of healing. The priest here records a recovery that has already happened, the scall is healed, before he pronounces anything. His word follows the body; it does not cause the cure.

Bright spots, even white bright spots: the doubled phrase stresses how pale they look. A new category, again for a man or a woman, and the kind of pale blotch that would have made any neighbour anxious.

Darkish white means dull, not glossy. A freckled spot is bohaq, a word that survives in Arabic as the name of a harmless skin whitening. Groweth in the skin describes something that simply blooms there, and the verdict is brief: he is clean.

The man whose hair is fallen off is qereach, bald at the back or crown. Yet is he clean. Elisha was mocked as a bald head in 2 Kings 2:23, but baldness itself is given no ritual meaning here at all.

Forehead bald is gibbeach, a receding hairline at the front of the head. Hebrew has a separate word for each kind of baldness, and both are covered so that neither could be mistaken for a sign of disease.

A white reddish sore in the bald patch changes the case. The chapter’s phrase for pinkish white returns from verse 19. Sprung up is the verb parach again, breaking out like a blossom, used also in verse 20 and here applied to scalp that has no hair left to judge by.

As the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh: the bald scalp is judged like ordinary skin, since without hair the signs of verses 30 to 37 cannot apply. Rising is se’eth, the swelling of verse 2, so the chapter ties its end back to its beginning.

Utterly unclean is the Hebrew doubled verb, tamme’ yetamme’enu, he shall surely pronounce him unclean. His plague is in his head is literally on his head, and the phrase is formal, stating where the condition lies as the last line of the diagnostic section.

Four public signs: torn clothes, uncovered or unkempt hair, a hand over the upper lip, and the cry. The covering of the lip is a gesture of mourning (Ezekiel 24:17, Micah 3:7). Lamentations 4:15 turns the cry around, as passers-by shout Depart ye; it is unclean at Jerusalem’s own people.

He shall dwell alone uses the same word, badad, as Balaam’s description of Israel in Numbers 23:9, a people that shall dwell alone. King Uzziah lived out his days in a several house (2 Chronicles 26:21), and in Luke 17:12 ten lepers stood afar off from Jesus.

Woollen or linen are the two cloths of ancient Israel, one from the flocks and one from the flax fields. The same word, nega‘, used for a stroke on the skin, is now applied to a garment, which shows the Hebrew category is wider than any disease.

Warp and woof are the two sets of threads in woven cloth: the warp stretched lengthwise on the loom, the woof passed across it. Some think the Hebrew here refers to spun yarn not yet woven. Either way the law reaches down to the threads themselves.

Greenish and reddish are both doubled colour words in Hebrew, yeraqraq and adamdam, meaning a tinge rather than the full colour. Yeraqraq is the word Psalm 68:13 uses for the sheen of gold on a dove’s feathers. The object is shown to the priest as a person would be.

The priest shuts up the garment for seven days, the same verb and the same period as for a person in verse 4. The article is set aside and watched as though it were under the same kind of observation.

Fretting leprosy is tsara‘ath mam’ereth, a malignant or painful affliction, from a root used in Ezekiel 28:24 of a pricking brier. Fretting in 1611 meant eating or gnawing away, as moth frets a garment. Spreading after a week is the sign here, as with skin.

He shall therefore burn that garment. The verb for burn is saraph, the complete destruction used for the remains of the sin offering outside the camp (4:12). Cloth cannot be sent outside the camp to wait for healing as a person can, so fire takes the place of separation.

If the mark has not spread, burning is not the next step. The chapter allows the article the same benefit of doubt a person received in verses 4 and 5, and the verses that follow describe a second chance.

The priest commands, but others do the washing: they wash the thing. His role is to direct and to look, not to handle. Another seven days follows, so the garment faces the same fourteen-day course of watching as a person with a doubtful spot.

Fret inward is pechetheth, a hollow or an eaten-out place. Bare within or without uses the very words for bald at the back and bald in front, qarachath and gabbachath, from verses 40 to 42. The worn place on cloth is described like a bald patch.

If the mark has faded after washing, the affected piece is torn out and the rest kept. Rend it out uses the verb qara‘, the same verb as the torn clothes of the leper in verse 45, now applied to cutting away the damaged section.

A spreading plague is poracheth, breaking out or blossoming, the verb used of the skin in verses 20 and 42. If the mark returns in the remaining cloth, repair has failed, and the whole article goes into the fire.

Washed the second time: a single wash put the garment under watch in verse 54, and a second wash, once the mark has gone, restores it. Two washings, a week apart, bring the cloth back into use as clean.

The closing formula names the task in two infinitives, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean. The verdict of clean comes first in the Hebrew, though the chapter has spent more words on uncleanness. Chapter 14 turns to the ritual for someone who has been healed.