Leviticus 14
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CHAPTER 14
Cleansing From Infectious Skin Diseases (14:1–32)
1 In the Bible, disease is symbolic of sin.41 Thus the cleansing of a diseased person involved not only physical washing with water (verse 8) but also the symbolic “washing away” of the pollution of sin by blood sacrifices. In other words, because disease was symbolic of sin, it needed to be atoned for by a blood sacrifice (see Exodus 25:17–22; 27:1–8 and comments).
2–7 First the priest had to go outside the camp and examine the person who was diseased. If the priest determined the person was physically healed, the first thing to be done was to kill a bird, let its blood drip into a pot of water, and then dip a live bird into the bloody water. This symbolized both paying the penalty for sin and the cleansing from sin. The bloody water was then sprinkled42 over the person and he was pronounced ceremonially clean (verse 7).
8–9 On the seventh day after the sprinkling ritual, a further cleansing with water was required. The significance of shaving off the person’s hair is not explained, but it surely made cleaning the body easier.
10–20 On the eighth day, the person being cleansed was to bring four offerings: a guilt offering (Leviticus 5:14–19), a sin offering (Leviticus 4:1–35), a burnt offering (Leviticus 1:1–17) and a grain offering (Leviticus 2:1–16). The guilt and sin offerings were not offered to atone for some particular sin that had “caused” the person to become diseased but rather to atone for the ritual pollution associated with the disease.
The first offering was the guilt offering43(verse 12). The priest was to apply some of the blood and oil of the offering to the person’s right ear, thumb and big toe—the same places where Aaron and his sons had been consecrated with blood (Exodus 29:19–20). This signified complete cleansing and consecration of the whole body.
After all the offerings had been offered (verses 19–20), the formerly diseased person was then completely clean and was accepted back into the life of the community.
21–32 These verses describe the offerings required of a poor person. Poor people still had to offer one lamb for their guilt offering, but in place of the other two lambs they could substitute two doves or two pigeons. The rest of the cleansing ritual was similar to that carried out for richer people (see verses 10–20).
Before we leave this section, it is well to reflect that before we believed in Christ we also were “outside the camp,” rejected, isolated, cut off from fellowship with God. But Jesus, our Priest, went outside the camp (verse 3), and came to us and restored us to wholeness and to fellowship with God. And He has commissioned us to go out and do likewise (John 20:21).
Cleansing From Mildew (14:33–57)
33–47 In this section the regulations for cleansing a house from mildew are given. These regulations went into effect only after the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, the “promised land” (verse 34), because before then they lived in tents, which could be moved and aired and thus were less subject to mildew.
Once again it was the priest’s job to examine any house where mildew was suspected and to determine how severe the mildew was. For the severest cases, the house had to be destroyed (verses 43–45). Living in a house with mildew was unhealthy for the occupants.
48–57 If the priest determined that a house no longer had mildew, the same ritual with the two birds was carried out that had been carried out for the person being cleansed from an infectious skin disease (see verses 3–7). However, in the case of a house, no sacrifices at the altar were required, because a house has no sin to atone for.
Why was God so concerned with mildewed fabric and mildewed houses? The reason: mildew was more than just a matter affecting physical health; it represented imperfection, decay and corruption. God had created a perfect world, but after that first sin of Adam and Eve, the world was subjected to frustration and placed in bondage to decay (Romans 8:20–21). The moral decay of humans is paralleled by the physical decay of creation as a whole. God desired wholeness, cleanness, and perfection in His creation; so through the Old Testament laws He made provision for the cleansing not only of humans but of their environment as well. But all these provisions were temporary. Only at the end of history, at the conclusion of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, will a new creation be ushered in—a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no sin, no mildew, no decay, no death (Revelation 21:1–4,27).