Leprosy

[Lev. 13:2] When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or a bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests:
When an individual noticed a skin disease he was obligated to go to the Kohen, who would determine if he was ritually impure or pure. If impure, he had to conform to the Torah Laws for the person afflicted with the disease and called a metzora. The priest (Kohen) would look for three signs:
1. The presence of two white hairs on the affected area,
2. The patch of tzaraas,
3. And raw flesh, noticing what degree it has spread.
If all these signs were not present, the priest would wait 7 days and reexamine the person. If the third examination did not reveal any symptoms, the Kohen would pronounce him ritually clean and discharge him. The status of a metzora was so severe that in the wilderness this individual was expelled from the three camps (Shechinah, Levites, and Israelites). Whereas a lesser disease was permitted to remain in the Israelite camp. One of the sins attributed to producing this disease as well as leprosy is slander or murmuring as demonstrated in the incident of Moses’ ‘sister Miriam.

When a man shall have in the skin - the fact of the following rules for distinguishing the plague of leprosy being incorporated with the Hebrew code of laws, proves the existence of the odious disease among that people. But a short time, little more than a year (if so long a period had elapsed since the exodus) when symptoms of leprosy seem extensively to have appeared among them; and as they could not be very liable to such a coetaneous disorder amid their active journeying and in the dry open air of Arabia, the seeds of the disorder must have been laid in Egypt, where it has always been endemic. There is every reason to believe that this was the case; that the leprosy was not a family complaint, hereditary among the Hebrews, but that they got it from intercourse with the Egyptians and from the unfavorable circumstances of their condition in the house of bondage. The great excitement and irritability of the skin in the hot and sandy regions of the East produce a far greater predisposition to leprosy of all kinds than in cooler temperatures; and cracks or blotches, inflammations or even contusions of the skin, very often lead to these in Arabia and Palestine, to some extent, but particularly in Egypt. Besides, the subjected and distressed state of the Hebrews in the latter country, and the nature of their employment, must have rendered them very liable to this as well as to various other blemishes and disaffections of the skin; in the production of which there are no causes more active or powerful than a depressed state of body and mind, hard labor under a burning sun, the body constantly covered with the excoriating dust of brick fields, and an impoverished diet - to all of which the Israelites were exposed while under the Egyptian bondage. It appears that, in consequence of these hardships, there was, even after they has left Egypt, a general predisposition among the Hebrews of the contagious forms of leprosy - so that it often occurred as a consequence of various other affections of the skin. And hence all coetaneous blemishes or blains - especially such as had a tendency to terminate in leprosy - were watched with a jealous eye from the firs. A swelling, a pimple, or bright spot on the skin, created a strong ground of suspicion of a mans being attacked by the deaden disease.
Be brought unto - like the Egyptian priest, the Levites united the character of physician with that of the sacred office; and on the appearance of any suspicious eruptions on the skin, the person having these was brought before the priest - not, however, to receive medical treatment, though it is not improbable that some purifying remedies might be prescribed, but to be examined with a view to those sanitary precautions which it belonged to legislation to adopt.
The leprosy, as covering the person with white, scaly scurf, has always been accounted an offensive blemish rather than a serious malady in the East, unless when it assumed its less common and malignant forms. When a Hebrew priest, after a careful inspection, discovered under the coetaneous blemish the distinctive signs of contagious leprosy, the person was immediately pronounced unclean, and is supposed to have been sent out of the camp to a lazaretto provided for that purpose. If the symptoms appeared to be doubtful, he ordered the person to kept in domestic confinement for seven days, when he was subjected to a second examination; and if during the previous week the eruption had subsided or appeared to be harmless, he was instantly discharged. But if the eruption continued unabated and still doubtful, he was put under surveillance another week; at the end of which the character of the disorder never failed to manifest itself, and he was either doomed to perpetual elusion from society or allowed to go at large. A person who had thus been detained on suspicion, when at length set at liberty, was obliged to Awash his clothes,@ as having been tainted by ceremonial pollution; and the purification through his clothes,@ as having been tainted by ceremonial pollution; and the purification through which he was required to go was, in the spirit of the Mosaic dispensation, symbolical of that inward purity it was instituted to promote.
7-9 scab spread - those doubtful cases, when they assumed a malignant character, appeared in one of two forms, apparently according to the particular constitution of the skin or of the habit generally. The one was somewhat dark (13:6) - that is, the obscure or dusky leprosy, in which the natural color of the hair (which in Egypt and Palestine is black) is not changed, as is repeatedly said in the sacred code, nor is there any depression in the dusky spot, while the patches, instead of keeping stationary to their first size, are perpetually enlarging their boundary. The patient laboring under this form was pronounced unclean by the Hebrew priest or physician, and hereby sentenced to a separation from his family and friends - a decisive proof of its being contagious.
9-37 the bright white leprosy is the most malignant and inveterate of all the varieties the disease exhibits, and it was mark by the following distinctive signs; a glossy white and spreading scale, upon an elevated base, the elevation depressed in the middle, but without a change of color; the black hair on the patches participating in the whiteness, and the scaly patches themselves perpetually enlarging their boundary. Several of these characteristics, taken separately, belong to other blemishes of the skin as well; so that none of them was to be taken alone, and it was only when the whole of them concurred that the Jewish priest, in his capacity of physician, was to pronounce the disease a malignant leprosy. If it spread over the entire frame without producing any ulceration, it lost its contagious power by degrees; or, in other words, it ran through its course and exhausted itself. In that case, there being no longer any fear of further evil, either to the individual himself or to the community, the patient was declared clean by the priest, while the dry scales were yet upon him, and restored to society. If, on the contrary, the patches ulcerated and quick or fungous flesh sprang up in them, the purulent matter of which, if brought into contact within the skin of other persons, would be taken into the inveterate leprosy. A temporary confinement was then declared to be totally unnecessary, and he was regarded as unclean for life. Other skin affections, which had a tendency to terminate in leprosy, though they were not decided symptoms when alone, were a boil (18-23); a hot burning, that is, a fiery inflammation or carbuncle (24-28); and a dry scull (29-37), when the leprosy was distinguished by being deeper than the skin and the hair become thin and yellow.
The spiritual lesson along with this command as taught by the Jews related to one attempting to remove the symbol and deny to the priest that he had such a disease.
Bald - forehead bald - the falling off of the hair, when the baldness commences in the back part of the head, is another symptom which creates a suspicion of leprosy. But it was not of itself a decisive sign unless taken in connection with other tokens, such as a sore of a reddish white color (13:43). The Hebrews as well as other Orientals were accustomed to distinguish between the forehead baldness, which might be natural, and that baldness which might be the consequence of disease.
Any person who had been declared metzora by a priest had to rend his clothes as a mourner did. He also must let his hair grow for as long as he is afflicted without cutting it. His head and face had to be covered down to his upper lip and his clothes had to remain unlaundered. Upon meeting another individual he or she had to cry out unclean! Warning the other person to keep away. To ancient Judaism the punishment for the individual who had leprosy or this disease to be separated from the company of others seem appropriate, since leprosy was a disease thought traditionally to be brought on by gossip or murmuring, which itself separated people through strife.
The person who was declared affected with the leprosy forthwith exhibited all the tokens of suffering from a heavy calamity. Rending garments and uncovering the head were common signs of mourning. As to the putting a covering upon the upper lip, that means either wearing a moustache, as the Hebrews used to shave the upper lip, or simply keeping a hand over it. All these external marks of grief were intended to proclaim, in addition to his own exclamation unclean! that the person was a leper, whose company every one must shun.
If such a disease was found in an individual and declared to be unclean by a priest, the garments were to be burn. 47-59 it is well known that infectious diseases, such as scarlet fever, measles, the plague, are latently imbibed and carried by the clothes. But the language of this passage clearly indicates a disease to which clothes themselves were subject, and which was followed by effects on them analogous to those which malignant leprosy produces on the human body - for similar regulations were made for the rigid inspection of suspected garments by a priest as for the examination of a leprous person. It has long been conjectured and recently ascertained by the use of a lens, that the leprous condition of swine is produced by myriads of minute insects engendered in their skin; and regarding all leprosy as of the same nature, it is thought that this affords a sufficient reason for the injunction in the Mosaic law to destroy the clothes in which the disease, after careful observation, seemed to manifest itself. Clothes are sometimes seen contaminated by this disease in the West Indies and the southern part of America, and it may be presumed that, as the Hebrews were living in the desert where they had not the convenience of frequent changes and washing the clothes, the wool and the skin mats on which they lay, would be apt to breed infectious vermin, which, being settled in the stuff, would imperceptibly gnaw it and leave stains similar to those described by Moses. It is well known that the wool of sheep dying of disease, if it had not been shorn from the animal while living, and also skins, if not thoroughly prepared by scouring, are liable to the effects described in this passage. The stains are described as of a greenish or reddish color, according, perhaps, to the color or nature of the ingredients used in preparing them; for acids convert blue vegetable colors into red and alkalis change then into green (brown). It appears, then, that the leprosy, though sometimes inflicted as a miraculous judgment (Num. 12:10 and 2 Kg. 5:27) was a natural disease, which is known in Eastern countries still; while the rules prescribed by the Hebrew legislator for distinguishing the true character and varieties of the disease and which are for superior to the method of treatment now followed in those regions, show the divine wisdom by which he was guided. Doubtless the origin of the disease is owing to some latent causes in nature; and perhaps a more extended acquaintance with the archaeology of Egypt and the natural history of the adjacent countries, may confirm the opinion that leprosy resulted from noxious insects or a putrid fermentation. But whatever the cause of the disease, the laws enacted by divine authority regarding it, while they pointed in the first instance to sanitary ends, were at the same time intended, by simulating to carefulness against ceremonial defilement, to foster a spirit of religious fear and inward purity.