Scripture Daily

Context No. 259 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 14:1-7: in context

1The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest, 3and the priest shall go out of the camp. The priest shall examine him. Behold, if the plague of leprosy is healed in the leper, 4then the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two living clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. 5The priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water. 6As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood, the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. 7He shall sprinkle on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird go into the open field.

This is the ceremony for a person who has been healed of a skin disease that made them unclean and shut them out of the community. It reads like arcane ritual, easy to skip, but the shape of what happens is worth slowing down over, because it is a small drama of someone being brought back from exclusion.

The first move is the priest's. He goes out of the camp to the person, rather than making the outcast come to him. Then he calls for two birds. One is killed over fresh running water in a clay pot. The other, still alive, is dipped along with cedar, scarlet, and hyssop into the blood of the bird that was killed, and then, after the healed person is sprinkled seven times and declared clean, that living bird is released into the open field. Two birds, and everything turns on the difference between them. One dies, and by its death the other is carried out over the fields into open air, alive and free, with the blood of the first on it.

The whole rite says something the excluded person needed to feel in their body: you are being brought back, the priest came out to you, and your return into open life came by way of a death that was not yours. One bird stayed in the clay pot and one flew out over the field. When I have felt shut out and then let back in, have I noticed that someone came out to reach me, and that my freedom cost more than I paid?

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