Leviticus 14--Laws for Cleansing Lepers and Houses

Leviticus 14
English Standard Version

Laws for Cleansing Lepers
14 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “This shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, 3 and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall look. Then, if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person, 4 the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop. 5 And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water. 6 He shall take the live bird with the cedarwood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. 7 And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go into the open field. 8 And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. And after that he may come into the camp, but live outside his tent seven days. 9 And on the seventh day he shall shave off all his hair from his head, his beard, and his eyebrows. He shall shave off all his hair, and then he shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and he shall be clean.

10 “And on the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish, and a grain offering of three tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, and one log of oil. 11 And the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who is to be cleansed and these things before the Lord, at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 12 And the priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it for a guilt offering, along with the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. 13 And he shall kill the lamb in the place where they kill the sin offering and the burnt offering, in the place of the sanctuary. For the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest; it is most holy. 14 The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 15 Then the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand 16 and dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand and sprinkle some oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. 17 And some of the oil that remains in his hand the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt offering. 18 And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed. Then the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. 19 The priest shall offer the sin offering, to make atonement for him who is to be cleansed from his uncleanness. And afterward he shall kill the burnt offering. 20 And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean.

21 “But if he is poor and cannot afford so much, then he shall take one male lamb for a guilt offering to be waved, to make atonement for him, and a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and a log of oil; 22 also two turtledoves or two pigeons, whichever he can afford. The one shall be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering. 23 And on the eighth day he shall bring them for his cleansing to the priest, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, before the Lord. 24 And the priest shall take the lamb of the guilt offering and the log of oil, and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. 25 And he shall kill the lamb of the guilt offering. And the priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 26 And the priest shall pour some of the oil into the palm of his own left hand, 27 and shall sprinkle with his right finger some of the oil that is in his left hand seven times before the Lord. 28 And the priest shall put some of the oil that is in his hand on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, in the place where the blood of the guilt offering was put. 29 And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed, to make atonement for him before the Lord. 30 And he shall offer, of the turtledoves or pigeons, whichever he can afford, 31 one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, along with a grain offering. And the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for him who is being cleansed. 32 This is the law for him in whom is a case of leprous disease, who cannot afford the offerings for his cleansing.”

Laws for Cleansing Houses
33 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 34 “When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put a case of leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession, 35 then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, ‘There seems to me to be some case of disease in my house.’ 36 Then the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean. And afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. 37 And he shall examine the disease. And if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, 38 then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days. 39 And the priest shall come again on the seventh day, and look. If the disease has spread in the walls of the house, 40 then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city. 41 And he shall have the inside of the house scraped all around, and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour out in an unclean place outside the city. 42 Then they shall take other stones and put them in the place of those stones, and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house.

43 “If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, 44 then the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. 45 And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place. 46 Moreover, whoever enters the house while it is shut up shall be unclean until the evening, 47 and whoever sleeps in the house shall wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house shall wash his clothes.

48 “But if the priest comes and looks, and if the disease has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the disease is healed. 49 And for the cleansing of the house he shall take two small birds, with cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop, 50 and shall kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water 51 and shall take the cedarwood and the hyssop and the scarlet yarn, along with the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed and in the fresh water and sprinkle the house seven times. 52 Thus he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird and with the fresh water and with the live bird and with the cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn. 53 And he shall let the live bird go out of the city into the open country. So he shall make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean.”

54 This is the law for any case of leprous disease: for an itch, 55 for leprous disease in a garment or in a house, 56 and for a swelling or an eruption or a spot, 57 to show when it is unclean and when it is clean. This is the law for leprous disease.

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We briefly mentioned last time that both of these sets of laws were coming.  If a leper were found to be cleansed, then there would be a set of rules regarding declaring the person to be "clean" again and a sacrifice to go with it.  Notice that the leper stays outside the camp and the priest has to come to him.  The man is still not allowed to be around other people and not able to enter the Tabernacle until he is pronounced clean, but he would have had to have been following the Israelites from a distance here in order to be able to call upon the priest.  So far, this is the only time that we've seen God instruction the priests to leave the Tabernacle-in fact, we've seen some prohibitions in the past which we summarized as saying that there was always work to be done and atonement to be made continually, both day and night, and that they were never to leave their post.  However, this is not abandoning their post, but instead going to the man who is unable to come to God (keep this in mind as we think about the command given to us in The Great Commission as we know that all men are "unclean" in their sin and don't see after God and we are called to "go into all the world" to minister to people and take the gospel to them to help them become "clean" wherever they are).


The symbolism of the sacrifice may be missed here, but notice that this sacrifice is most like the sacrifice on The Day of Atonement (we have talked about that before, but just haven't studied it here yet in Leviticus).  There are some reminders here of the Passover as well with the hyssop being used to apply the blood and this is also slightly reminiscent of Mt. Sinai when the people were sprinkled with "the blood of the covenant."  We also just saw a similar ceremony for the priests in order to purify them and make them holy for the LORD's service during their "ordination."  Here one of the birds is killed and its blood collected over clean water(probably running water so that the blood wall wash downstream and not contaminate the water source) and the other bird is a kind of "scapegoat" (that will be something very particular later in the Day of Atonement, but we've picked up that word in English and use it without knowing its origins) as the sin and uncleanliness seems to be carried away on this bird that is set free.

After the man was examined and found to be clean and the sacrifices were made, the man had to shave all of the hair of his head, eyebrows, facial hair--ALL of it and wash his clothes and bathe in clean water.  He was then allowed to come back into the camp, but could not enter his tent and had to sleep outside for seven days.  On the eighth day, he was to again shave all of the hair on his head and face and bath and wash his clothes before bringing two male lambs, one female lamb and a grain offering to the Tabernacle (specific instructions are given for what the grain offering is supposed to include).  One of the male lambs is to be offered as a guilt offering, but it is to be killed in the same place as they kill the lambs for the sin offerings and burnt offerings so that this offering would belong to the priests.   The rest of this ceremony should be familiar as it's the same instructions as we had for purification of Aaron and his sons when they became priests--blood on their right earlobe and on the thumb of their right hand and on the big toe of their right foot.  Then the priest is to pour some of the oil that has been brought in his left hand and use one of the fingers on his right hand (probably his index finger) to sprinkle the oil before the LORD seven times.  Then there will be oil put on the right ear lobe, right thumb and right big toe of the person being cleansed (this represents both the blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit being applied to the unclean man to make him clean as the oil is representation of the Spirit), and the rest of the oil in the priests hand will be poured over the man's head to represent being anointed with the Holy Spirit and His power being poured out on those who are cleansed from the "leprosy" of our sin nature.  If for some reason the person being cleansed cannot afford the lambs to be offered as a sin offering and burnt offering, then two turtledoves or pigeons may be used as a substitute-one for the sin offering and the other for the other for the burnt offering.  It seems reasonable that a person who had been separated from his people for so long would come back and not have large herds or flocks from which to find these sacrifices.

Similarly, we also talked in the last blog briefly about the fact that priests would need to inspect homes for the presence of a mold or mildew or fungus that would make the house "unclean."  We did not at the time talk about any rules for inspecting the house because the people don't live in houses right now--they live in tents, so the rules about fabrics and animal skins from the last chapter would also apply to their tents.  But there will be a time when they will move into houses in the new land, and the LORD now gives Aaron and his sons instructions for that time.

If a man thinks that there is something in the house that is making the occupants of the house sick, then the owner of the house is to notify the priest, and the priest is to order everyone to vacate the house so that they will not become sick and unclean should the house be determined to be "diseased."  If there are reddish or greenish spots on the walls. then the house is to be shut up for seven days and on the seventh day it will be inspected again to see if the disease (mold, mildew, fungus, etc) has spread.  Then all the affected stones will be removed and put in an "unclean" place (probably the garbage dump) outside the city and all the plaster will be scraped and taken outside the city to the "unclean" place and the stones that have been removed will be replaced with new stones and the house will be plastered to replace the plaster that was scraped off and removed.

If after all this the "disease" breaks out in the house again the the whole house shall be declared "unclean" (condemned) and must be torn down and of the stones and timber and plaster are to be carried out of town to the "unclean" place.  Anyone that entered the "unclean" house, even for a short period of time will be unclean until evening (the beginning of the next day) and anyone who eats or sleeps in the unclean house will have to wash his clothes as well because they spent more time in the house and had a longer exposure to the disease.

Up to this point, everything sounds very similar to rules that we'd still use today for health inspections of a building for mold and mildew issues, but this next part may sound a little strange to us.  If after the stones are replaced and the walls are plastered there is no more disease, then the house will be pronounced "clean" or "healed" and the same kind of sacrifice that was made outside the city for the leprous man if also made for the house because someone or something that was unclean has been made clean.  It is the same rule and sacrifice that is to be made whether the "leprosy" applies to a skin condition on a man, an issue with a garment or animal skin, or a house, or anything else that catches a leprous disease that makes it "unclean" and is then made "clean." See how the LORD cared for His people in giving them instructions in the Law about how to deal with not only infectious diseases, but also health issues like "black mold" and mildew that would make people sick--maybe even to the point of death?  We've already pointed out the connection between such diseases and our sin nature, so then the need for the sacrifices here at the time of cleansing and the symbolism of the blood cleansing even the things that don't have souls but the blood and the Spirit making the unclean man to be clean should make some sense to us.