Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 13:46
All the days wherein the plague [shall be] in him he shall be defiled; he [is] unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp [shall] his habitation [be].
Dwell alone – More properly, dwell apart; that is, separated from the people.
Though thus excluded from general contact with society, it is not likely that lepers ceased to be objects of sympathy and kindness, such as they now are in those Christian and Moslem countries in which the leprosy prevails. That they associated together in the holy land, as they do at present, is evident from 2Ki 7:3; Luk 17:12. It has been conjectured that a habitation was provided for them outside Jerusalem, on the hill Gareb (Bezetha), which is mentioned only in Jer 31:39.
Without the camp – Compare the margin reference. A leper polluted everything in the house which he entered. A separate space used to be provided for lepers in the synagogues.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Partly, for his humiliation; partly, to prevent the infection of others; and partly, to show the danger of converse with spiritual lepers or notorious sinners. This rule excludes the society of sound persons, but not of lepers. See 2Ki 15:5; 2Ch 26:21.
Without the camp; so Num 12:14; and afterward without cities and places of great concourse, whereof we have examples, 2Ki 7:3; Luk 17:12.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
46. he shall dwell alone; withoutthe campin a lazaretto by himself, or associated with otherlepers (2Ki 7:3; 2Ki 7:8).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
All the days wherein the plague [shall be] in him he shall be defiled,…. Reckoned an unclean person, and avoided as such:
he [is] unclean; in a ceremonial sense, and pronounced as such by the priest, and was to be looked upon as such by others during the time of his exclusion and separation, until he was shown to the priest and cleansed, and his offering offered;
he shall dwell alone; in a separate house or apartment, as Uzziah did,
2Ch 26:21; none were allowed to come near him, nor he to come near to any; yea, according to Jarchi, other unclean persons might not dwell with him:
without the camp [shall] his habitation [be]; without the three camps, as the same Jewish writer interprets it, the camp of God, the camp of the Levites, and the camp of Israel: so Miriam, when she was stricken with leprosy, was shut out of the camp seven days, Nu 12:14. This was observed while in the wilderness, but when the Israelites came to inhabit towns and cities, then lepers were excluded from thence; for they defiled, in a ceremonial sense, every person and thing in a house they came into, whether touched by them or not. So Bartenora b observes, that if a leprous person goes into any house, all that is in the house is defiled, even what he does not touch; and that if he sits under a tree, and a clean person passes by, the clean person is defiled; and if he comes into a synagogue, they make a separate place for him ten hands high, and four cubits broad, and the leper goes in first, and comes out last. The Persians, according to Herodotus c, had a custom much like this; he says, that if any of the citizens had a leprosy or a morphew, he might not come into the city, nor be mixed with other Persians (or have any conversation with them), for they say he has them because he has sinned against the sun: and there was with us an ancient writ, called “leproso amovendo” d, that lay to remove a leper who thrust himself into the company of his neighbours in any parish, either in the church, or at other public meetings, to their annoyance. This law concerning lepers shows that impure and profane sinners are not to be admitted into the church of God; and that such who are in it, who appear to be so, are to be excluded from it, communion is not to be had with them; and that such, unless they are cleansed by the grace of God, and the blood of Christ, shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven; for into that shall nothing enter that defiles, or makes an abomination, or a lie; see 1Co 5:7
Re 21:27.
b In Misn. Celim, c. 1. sect. 4. so in Misn. Negaim, c. 13. sect. 7, 11, 12. c Clio, sive, l. 1. c. 138. d See the Supplement to Chambers’s Dictionary, in the word “Leprosy”.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(46) He shall dwell alone.In consequence of his extreme defilement, the leper had to live in seclusion outside the camp or city (Num. 5:1-4; Num. 13:10-15; 2Ki. 7:3, &c.). According to the legislation during the second Temple, if he stood under a tree and a clean person happened to pass by, he defiled the passer by. In the synagogue which he wished to attend they were obliged to make him a separate compartment, ten handbreadths high and four cubits long and broad. He had to be the first to go in and the last to leave the synagogue. Hence, leprosy was regarded as a living death, and as an awful punishment from the Lord (2Ki. 5:7; 2Ch. 26:20), which they invoked upon all their mortal enemies (2Sa. 3:29; 2Ki. 5:27). The leper was debarred from conjugal intercourse. These ancient Rabbinic laws were imported into the Christian Church during the Middle Ages. When any one was afflicted with this distemper, the priest, wearing his stole and holding the crucifix, conducted him into the church, where the leper had to exchange his clothes for a peculiar black garment, and the mass was read over him and the service for the dead. He was then taken to a sequestered house, where earth was thrown upon his feet as a sign of burial, and was admonished never to appear otherwise than in his black garment and barefooted. He was not allowed to enter a church, or any place where there was a mill or bread was baked, or come near a well or fountain. He forfeited both the right of inheritance and of disposing of his property, for he was considered a dead man.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
LEPROSY IN A GARMENT, Lev 13:47-59.
Moses proceeds to describe a leprous garment in the very words used to describe the leprosy in a man plague or stroke of leprosy. This has moved the mirth of some and the wonder of others. For it is evident that the garments of the leper are not intended. 1.) The method of purifying these is described in Lev 14:8. 2.) The infection is described as visibly spreading in the garment. This is totally unlike “the garment spotted with the flesh.” 3.) It is subject to priestly inspection and condemnation before it is to be destroyed. 4.) No connexion of the leprous garment with a leprous wearer is hinted at. There must therefore be possible in garments something analogous to the loathsome leprosy in mankind. Here modern science comes to our aid in vindication of the accuracy of the Mosaic account. It is well known that there are some skin-diseases which originate in a genus of small spiders called acarus, embracing the mites and ticks, and other cutaneous disorders proceeding from a fungus. The analogy between the insect which frets the human skin and that which frets the garment is close enough for the proposes of the ceremonial law.
47. Woollen or linen Garments composed of the wool of sheep or of flax were, according to Jewish canons, exposed to this ceremonial impurity. Silk, hemp, camel’s hair, and other substances are not liable to the plague. But mixed fabrics in which wool or flax predominates are capable of contracting this impurity.
48. Anything made of skin Dyed skins and garments are not rendered unclean by leprosy.
Warp or woof The vermin or animalculae may eat the threads of either, leaving the other untouched. Michaelis in his researches upon this subject found an intelligent woollen manufacturer in Germany who testified that when dead wool, or the wool of sheep which have died of disease, is used for either the warp or the woof, vermin are apt to establish themselves in it, particularly when it is worn close to the body and warmed thereby. The cloth woven of such wool not only becomes very soon bare, but first full of little depressions and then holes.
The Jews, from want of linen and from poverty, always wore woollen next the skin; hence their flesh was specially exposed to pollution from these infinitesimal insects of the moth genus. It has been suggested that the leprosy in linen is mildew, which spreads in partially coloured spots, till it gradually eats up the garment. In leather a delicate fungus or cryptogam eats holes under certain circumstances.
49. Greenish or reddish Moths by eating away the nap produce a slight discoloration, but mildew and rust cause spots of these colours.
51. A fretting leprosy Properly an inveterate or exasperated leprosy or corrosion.
55. It is unclean Here we observe that the spreading of the spot is not a required indication of uncleanness, but simply the continuance of the stain after washing and drying. Indelible rust or mildew would therefore render a garment unclean.
Fret inward Literally, it is a hollow in its back-baldness or in its front-baldness a depression of the front or back side of the cloth, caused by eating off the nap. This scrupulous care of garments was a part of that process by which the idea of spiritual purity was to be developed through physical purity. First, the natural, afterward the spiritual. 1Co 15:46. 4. ) The leprous garment is not treated as contagious, since washing would develop the infection. 5.) According to Jewish law a minor, a heathen, a proselyte, a leprous garment, and a leprous house of a non-Israelite, do not render unclean, nor does a bridegroom seized with leprosy defile any one during the first seven days of his marriage. 6.) Naaman, a leper, commanded the armies of Syria; Gehazi conversed with the king of Israel; and the leper in later times was not shut out from the synagogue nor from the Christian churches. We conclude, therefore, that the treatment of the leprosy prescribed by Moses was not sanitary, but ceremonial, like the separation and uncleanness of menstruous women, and other defilements under the Mosaic law as touching the dead, and having an issue, (Num 5:2,) the treatment of which had a far deeper reason than sanitary caution.
(3.) This view suggests the important question, Of what is the leprosy the type? It is not surprising that the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament, affords no direct answer, for there are some types, like some parables, whose spiritual import is so obvious that they need no further explanation. All minds instantly appreciate the intended moral lesson. It is enough for us to know that the principle is laid down in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the whole of the Jewish dispensation was typical a shadow of good things to come in the Gospel. Hence we are not to expect that every type in the Levitical ritual will be explained in detail, and that its antitype be indicated in express terms by the spirit of inspiration. The leprosy, the only disease which rendered a person unclean, is an impressive type of the great moral malady, sin. This plague corrupts and destroys the soul, excludes from the society of the holy, and banishes the incurable to the eternal pest-house of hell. For this the only cleansing is the blood of Jesus Christ, as typically set forth in the cleansing of the leper in the next chapter. Says Hengstenberg, “Every leper was a living sermon, a loud admonition to keep unspotted from the world. The exclusion of lepers from the camp, from the holy city, conveyed figuratively the same lesson as is done in the New Testament passages. See notes on Mat 6:24; Col 3:5; Rev 21:27; Eph 5:5. It is only when we take this view of the leprosy that we account for the fact that just this disease so frequently occurs as the theocratic punishment of sin. The image of sin is best suited for reflecting it; he who is a sinner before God is represented as a sinner in the eyes of man also by the circumstance that he must exhibit before men the image of sin. God took care that the image and the thing itself were perfectly coincident, although, no doubt, there were exceptions.”
Leprosy is a living death, poisoning all the springs and corrupting all the humours of life, dissolving little by little the whole body, so that limb actually falls away from limb through decay. Hence the leper is the type of one dead in sin; the emblems of his misery are the same as those of mourning for the dead; and the means of cleansing him are the same as those prescribed for one who has touched a corpse, and which were never used except on these two occasions. The penitent cry of David, after his deadly sins, “Purge me with hyssop,” (Psa 51:7,) indicates a sense of utter spiritual defilement, faintly symbolized by the loathsome leprosy which was ceremonially cleansed with hyssop.
As the new-born children of leprous parents are often as pretty and as healthy in appearance as any others before the workings of the disease become visible in some of the signs described in this chapter, so the leprosy is a striking type of original or inborn depravity. If the sin principle in the sweetest babe is left unchecked by power divine he may unfold into a Nero, a Cesar Borgia, or a Robespierre.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
46. Dwell alone “The camp was afraid of contagion. Save the untouched by expelling the defiled.” The picture of a leper is a forlorn man with bare head, sitting in his booth without the camp, with his pitcher of water and loaf of bread by his side supplies kindly left daily where he can find them, by his kindred within the camp or city. Where there is a number they were not forbidden to associate, as is seen 2Ki 7:3; Luk 17:12. Such separated unclean persons may be still seen in the east. Dr. Thomson saw one on a rocky hill living in a booth of green branches. There she passed wearisome days and lonely nights till death released her. “We remonstrated against such barbarity, and the men consented to have her brought into a hired room, where we could provide suitable food and prescribe for her disease. But the women rose in furious clamour and rebellion against the proposal, and it had to be abandoned. I was amazed at the barbarity of the women. They passed her by until she died; then, however, they assembled in troops, and screamed, and tossed their arms, and tore their hair, with boisterous lamentations.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Lev 13:46 All the days wherein the plague [shall be] in him he shall be defiled; he [is] unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp [shall] his habitation [be].
Ver. 46. Without the camp. ] And that utterly, if incurable, as Uzzias. A lively type of excommunication, which the apostle describeth in 2Co 5:11-12 , and our Saviour in Mat 18:17 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
without the camp. Num 5:2; Num 12:10-15.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
the days: Pro 30:12
without: Num 5:2, Num 12:14, Num 12:15, 2Ki 7:3, 2Ki 15:5, 2Ch 26:21, Lam 1:1, Lam 1:8, 1Co 5:5, 1Co 5:9-13, 2Th 3:6, 2Th 3:14, 1Ti 6:5, Heb 12:15, Heb 12:16, Rev 21:27, Rev 22:15
Reciprocal: Lev 4:12 – without the camp Lev 14:3 – out of Lev 24:14 – without Num 19:3 – without the camp Luk 17:12 – which
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Lev 13:46. He shall dwell alone For his humiliation, to prevent the infection of others, and to show the danger of converse with spiritual lepers, or notorious sinners. Without the camp shall his habitation be See Num 5:2. In after times they were shut out of the cities, as now out of the camp, (2Ki 7:3,) and there they dwelt by themselves, 2Ki 15:5; and so it was among other nations.