Scripture Daily

Context No. 1777 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 13:45-52: in context

45“The leper in whom the plague is shall wear torn clothes, and the hair of his head shall hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ 46All the days in which the plague is in him he shall be unclean. He is unclean. He shall dwell alone. His dwelling shall be outside of the camp. 47“The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it is a woolen garment, or a linen garment; 48whether it is in warp or woof; of linen or of wool; whether in leather, or in anything made of leather; 49if the plague is greenish or reddish in the garment, or in the leather, or in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything made of leather; it is the plague of leprosy, and shall be shown to the priest. 50The priest shall examine the plague, and isolate the plague seven days. 51He shall examine the plague on the seventh day. If the plague has spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in the skin, whatever use the skin is used for, the plague is a destructive mildew. It is unclean. 52He shall burn the garment, whether the warp or the woof, in wool or in linen, or anything of leather, in which the plague is, for it is a destructive mildew. It shall be burned in the fire.

The law prescribes how the one with the dreaded skin disease must live: torn clothes, loosened hair, the upper lip covered, and the cry going before him, Unclean, unclean. As long as the disease is in him, he is unclean, and he must live alone, his dwelling outside the camp, cut off from the community. The chapter goes on to the garment infected with mildew, which, if it spreads, must be burned. But the heaviest word is about the person: he shall dwell alone, outside the camp.

The cruelty of the disease was not only in the body but in the isolation. The unclean person was put outside the camp, cut off from family, from worship, from the community, forced to live alone and to warn others away with the cry, unclean, unclean. Whatever the medical wisdom of it, the picture it leaves is of the isolating power of uncleanness, its power to separate a person from all that gives life its warmth, to push them outside, alone. And Scripture has long seen in this a picture of what sin does. Sin, too, isolates; it separates us from God and, often, from one another, pushing us outside, into a loneliness of guilt and estrangement, so that we feel, in our own way, unclean and cut off. The leper outside the camp is an image of the alienation that uncleanness brings. But the gospel takes this image and transforms it. For Christ, the New Testament says, suffered outside the gate, went out to the place of the unclean and the rejected, to bear our uncleanness and bring the outcast back. Where the leper had to cry unclean and keep his distance, Jesus drew near to lepers and touched them, and was not defiled but made them clean. He went outside the camp, into the place of separation, to end our separation; he took our uncleanness on himself so that we, the unclean, might be brought in. The one thing the leper could not do, cleanse himself and come back into the camp, Christ has done for us, going out to where we are cut off and bringing us home. So the isolation of uncleanness is not the last word; there is one who went outside the camp to end it.

Do I know something of the isolation that uncleanness and sin bring, the loneliness of guilt and estrangement that pushes me outside, and can I take hold of the good news that Christ went outside the camp, to the place of the unclean, to bear my uncleanness and bring the outcast home?

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