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, ( 2
Chronicles 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, ( Numbers
12:14 Numbers
12:15 ) . 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 F2 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
F3, 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" F4, 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 ( 1
Corinthians 5:7 1
Corinthians 5:11 1
Corinthians 5:13 ) ( Revelation
21:27 ) .
F2 In Misn. Celim, c. 1. sect. 4. so in Misn. Negaim, c. 13. sect. 7, 11, 12.
F3 Clio, sive, l. 1. c. 138.
F4 See the Supplement to Chambers's Dictionary, in the word "Leprosy".