The Way Back Begins Outside the Camp

Moses alone is addressed for the cleansing of a person; Aaron is named again only at verse 33, when the subject turns to houses. The chapter is the sequel to 13:46, which left the afflicted living outside the camp with no word yet about a way back.

In the day of his cleansing gives the rite a date on the calendar, a day that can be looked forward to. He shall be brought unto the priest, yet the next verse sends the priest out to him. Brought here means the case is referred, not that the man crosses the boundary first.

Healed is nirpa, a passive form of rapha, the verb of Exodus 15:26, I am the LORD that healeth thee. No healer is named and no treatment is described. When Jesus told a cleansed leper to shew thyself to the priest (Mark 1:44), this is the inspection he meant.

The birds are tsipporim, the general word for small birds such as sparrows, not the pigeons of the altar. Scarlet is shani, a crimson dye made from the kermes insect, and hyssop is the plant that painted the Passover blood (Exodus 12:22). The same trio returns for the red heifer in Numbers 19:6.

Running water is mayim chayyim, literally living water: water from a spring or stream rather than a cistern. The same phrase is behind Jeremiah’s fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13). The bird is killed over the vessel so its blood falls into the fresh water and mixes with it.

The living bird is dipped into the blood of the dead one, and goes into the mixture alongside the other three items. The Mishnah (Negaim 14:1) describes the cedar and hyssop bound together with the scarlet thread, making a sprinkler with the bird held beside it.

The verdict clean is spoken at the first stage, before washing or shaving. The living bird is let loose into the open field, literally upon the face of the field. Two birds, one killed and one released, anticipates the two goats of 16:8–22, one slain and one sent away.

The first washing and shaving let him back inside the camp, but tarry abroad out of his tent keeps him from his own home for a week. Later Jewish interpretation took this as a week without marital relations, a reading of the tent as the household rather than the building.

Head, beard, eyebrows, and then even all his hair. The eyebrows, gabboth ‘enayim, the arches of the eyes, are named nowhere else in the Bible. A body shaved this completely looks almost newborn; Numbers 8:7 prescribes a full shave for the Levites at their dedication too.

A log, about a third of a litre of oil, is a measure named only in this chapter (verses 10, 12, 15, 21 and 24). Three tenth deals, three tenths of an ephah of fine flour, is about three times the grain of an ordinary offering. The eighth day marks a new beginning after the week.

The priest that maketh him clean is a title in Hebrew, hammetaher, the cleansing priest. The verb for present, he’emid, means to cause to stand: the man himself is set before the LORD with his animals, as if he too were being presented.

A trespass offering, asham, is waved with the oil before it is slaughtered. Waving is unusual for an asham, and the pairing of a lamb with oil in a wave offering recalls the consecration portions of 8:27. It is the first of the four offerings of the eighth day.

The holy place here is the north side of the altar, where 1:11 and 4:24 place the killing of burnt and sin offerings. The comparison as the sin offering is the priest’s, so is the trespass offering restates 7:7: one law for both, and the meat belongs to the officiating priest.

Tip of the ear is tenuk, a word found only in these rites and in Aaron’s ordination (Exodus 29:20; Leviticus 8:23–24). The right side is named each time. The blood is applied to the living person, where most blood in Leviticus goes onto the altar.

The priest pours oil into the palm of his own left hand, and the Hebrew stresses his own. His hand becomes the vessel for the rest of the rite. Oil is poured, not smeared, so it is a measured, visible amount he holds up and uses.

Oil sprinkled seven times before the LORD happens almost nowhere else; the nearest parallel is Moses sprinkling the altar with oil seven times at the consecration in 8:11. The right finger dips and the left hand holds, a division of labour between the priest’s two hands.

The oil goes upon the blood of the trespass offering, not beside it. The Hebrew says the oil is placed on top of the blood already on the ear, thumb and toe, so the marking is layered, blood first and oil over it.

The rest of the oil is poured on the head. Aaron received oil on his head at his anointing (8:12), and Psalm 133:2 lingers on it running down to his beard. Here the same gesture is made for an ordinary Israelite, man or woman, who has come back from outside the camp.

The sin offering is the ewe lamb of verse 10, since 4:32 names a female lamb for an individual’s sin offering. Afterward he shall kill the burnt offering: the order is fixed, the removal of uncleanness first and the offering of complete dedication second.

He shall be clean is the third pronouncement of the rite. At verse 7 he was clean enough to enter the camp, at verse 9 his home, and now the sanctuary. The Hebrew uses the same word each time, but each stage opens a door further in.

If he be poor translates dal, one who is thin or low. Cannot get so much is literally his hand does not reach. The trespass lamb is not reduced; only the grain drops, from three tenth deals to one, and the other two animals are replaced.

Such as he is able to get is again his hand reaching, and it recurs in verses 30, 31 and 32. Turtledoves or young pigeons were the offering of the poor throughout Leviticus (5:7; 12:8), birds that could be trapped or kept near the house at little cost.

The date does not move. The poorer man comes on the eighth day, to the same door, before the LORD, exactly as the richer one. Poverty changes what he carries, not when he may come or where he may stand.

The lamb and the log are waved as in verse 12, and the Hebrew does not abbreviate. Its full restatement in verses 24 to 29 is itself the provision: the poorer man hears every step of his own rite rather than being told to do the same, but less.

Of the richer man’s animals, the lamb of the trespass offering is the one never replaced by a bird. An inference from the text: the rite needs enough blood to mark ear, thumb and toe, and that part of the ceremony is untouched by the reduction.

The palm of his own left hand, again. The verse is shorter than verse 15 but keeps the same careful detail that the priest’s own hand is the vessel, so there is no cheaper substitute for the priest’s part either.

Seven times recurs through this chapter: seven sprinklings of blood on the person (verse 7), seven days outside the tent (verse 8), seven sprinklings of oil (verses 16 and 27), and seven sprinklings of the house (verse 51). Seven is the number of completion running through each stage.

The wording shifts slightly from verse 17. Here the oil goes upon the place of the blood, not upon the blood itself, as though the earlier application may have dried or been wiped. The rabbis argued over the difference; the Hebrew makes it deliberately.

The last of the oil goes on the head, and none is left over. Some was sprinkled toward the sanctuary, some marked the body, and the remainder crowns the person. The single log is spent entirely on the one being restored.

He shall offer the one of the turtledoves: the bird offerings follow the procedure of 1:14–17 and 5:7–10, the neck wrung by the priest at the altar, the blood drained against its side. The poor man’s offering is handled at the altar like any other.

Even such as he is able to get is the third time in three verses that the text returns to what his hand can reach. The meat offering is still included, and the atonement before the LORD is word for word the same as for the richer man.

The closing formula names the person by his means: him whose hand is not able to get. Of the closing headings in these chapters, this is the only one that sets apart a law for the poor by name, as though the reduced rite deserved its own title.

Aaron is addressed again, as at the start of chapter 13. The instruction about houses is spoken to both brothers in the wilderness, where Israel lived in tents and had no stone houses at all.

The first mention of Canaan in Leviticus. Which I give to you for a possession promises the land in the present tense. And I put the plague makes the LORD the subject, yet the verse attributes no fault to the owner; it simply says where the affliction comes from.

It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague: the owner hedges twice. The Mishnah (Negaim 12:5) says that even a learned man must say as it were rather than give a verdict, since the verdict belongs to the priest alone.

Emptying the house first means only what is inside at the verdict becomes unclean. The rabbis drew from this that the Torah takes care of Israel’s property, down to its earthenware jars, which otherwise would have to be broken (11:33).

Hollow strakes translates sheqa‘aruroth, a word found only here: depressions or streaks in the wall. Strake was the 1611 spelling of streak, used also for the peeled white strakes on Jacob’s rods (Genesis 30:37). The colours are the greenish and reddish of the garments in 13:49.

The priest goes out of the house to the door and shuts it from there. He closes the house from its threshold, standing on the boundary between the building and the street, the same place where the offerings were brought at the tabernacle door.

On the seventh day the priest comes again, the one week of watching. For a house, spreading after seven days leads to repair, not to immediate destruction, a step no skin case in chapter 13 had.

The setting has become a city, not the camp. Houses in Canaan were built of fieldstone set in mud mortar, so a stone could be taken out and replaced. The unclean place without the city is a designated dump beyond the walls.

Scraped within round about: the whole inner surface is scraped, not just around the mark. The dust is literally dust, ‘aphar, the plaster scraped off, and it too is carried outside to the unclean place.

Other morter is ‘aphar again, the same word as the dust of verse 41. New earth replaces old. Plaister is tuach, to coat or smear, the verb Ezekiel 13:10–15 uses for daubing a wall with untempered mortar.

Three clauses stack up: after the stones, after the scraping, after the plastering. The repetition lists everything that has been tried, so the recurrence that follows is weighed against the full repair.

Fretting leprosy in the house uses mam’ereth, the malignant affliction of garments in 13:51. The word is now applied to stone and timber, so one term runs from skin through cloth to buildings.

Stones, timber and mortar are all the materials of a Canaanite house, and every one is carried out of the city. A house was a family’s dwelling in a land given as a possession (verse 34); losing one was a serious matter, which is why the repair came first.

All the while it is shut up is literally all the days he shut it. Going inside, even briefly, makes a person unclean until evening. The contamination attaches to the enclosed space, so crossing the threshold is itself contact.

Lying down and eating mean staying, not passing through, and they add washing the clothes. The distinction matches the one for carcasses in 11:24–25: a brief touch against prolonged contact.

The plague is healed, nirpa, the word used of the person in verse 3. A house is said to be healed, a strong word to use of a building, and it frames what follows as the same kind of recognition that was given to a body.

Two birds, cedar, scarlet and hyssop: the same materials as verse 4 for the person. This time they are not described as alive and clean, though both are clearly assumed. The same kit that restored a body now restores a building.

This time the priest himself kills the bird; at verse 5 he commanded someone else to do it. The difference is small in English and clear in Hebrew. Otherwise the vessel, the running water and the method are identical.

The order of the list changes to cedar, hyssop, scarlet, and the running water is named alongside the blood. The house is sprinkled seven times, as the person was in verse 7.

Six instruments are listed, each introduced by with: blood, running water, the living bird, cedar, hyssop, scarlet. Even the bird that will fly away is named as a means of cleansing, not simply a witness.

Out of the city into the open fields: the bird goes beyond the settlement, as the goat of 16:22 goes to a land not inhabited. The house has now been sprinkled, and the verdict is the plain one, it shall be clean.

The summary gathers the two chapters under one heading, all manner of plague of leprosy, and names the scall of 13:30 in particular, as though the scalp case were a distinct enough category to list on its own.

Garment and house sit side by side: woven cloth and built stone, the two man-made things the affliction can reach. The summary keeps them separate from the body cases in the next verse.

A rising, a scab, a bright spot: se’eth, sappachath, bahereth, the three words of 13:2, in the same order. The two chapters end with the vocabulary with which they began.

To teach is lehoroth, from the same root as torah; law here is teaching. When it is unclean, and when it is clean is literally in the day of the unclean and in the day of the clean, as if each verdict were a day on the calendar.