Leviticus 14: He Was Healed Before a Bird

The Church's seminary guide to Leviticus calls leprosy "an excellent symbol of sinfulness," and plenty of teaching grows from that, including the idea that the two birds in chapter 14 are a small copy of the scapegoat, one killed and one sent off carrying the trouble. I've heard it more than once and I don't buy it, at least not from this chapter.

Leviticus 16 has Aaron lay both hands on the live goat and confess the people's iniquities over it, and the goat bears them "unto a land not inhabited." The birds here get no confession. Nobody says the living one carries anything away. It gets dipped in the dead bird's blood first, which the scapegoat never does, and the priest has already looked the man over before anybody fetches a bird.

And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;

Leviticus 14:3

If he isn't healed this law never starts and he is still under the one from last Wednesday's chapter, outside the camp.

When does the cleansing ritual actually start?

Verse 2 calls the whole thing "the day of his cleansing," which is a generous use of the word day. The man is brought. He doesn't walk up to the tent of meeting on his own, because the priest comes out to him, and only then does anyone go for two birds, alive and clean, with cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop.

Nothing in the first rite says what kind of bird it is, though later, when the man is poor, the chapter gets specific and asks for turtledoves or young pigeons, but here it only says birds, alive, and clean. One is killed in an earthen vessel over running water. The living bird, the cedar, the scarlet and the hyssop are dipped in that blood, the priest sprinkles the man seven times and pronounces him clean, and the living bird is let loose into the open field. The release comes after the sentence, so the bird can't be the thing that cleans him. Cedar, scarlet and hyssop go into the same dip and the chapter never says what each one is for, and I'm not going to make something up.

Then the man has work of his own.

And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days.

Leviticus 14:8

He can come into the camp but still can't go into his tent, and that week is the part that gets lost when the chapter is summarized as a welcome home. He's back among people and he isn't home. On the seventh day he shaves again, and this time the verse names the head, the beard and the eyebrows, "even all his hair," and he washes his clothes and his flesh, "and he shall be clean."

Eyebrows too.

So verse 7 had pronounced him clean, outside the camp, before a single hair was cut, and verse 9 says he shall be clean again after the second shave with the altar still a day off. I think of those as two thresholds, one at the edge of the camp and one at his own door.

What does the eighth day still cost?

On the eighth day he brings two he lambs without blemish, one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, three tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, and a log of oil. The priest presents the man and all of it at the door of the tabernacle. One he lamb is the trespass offering, waved with the log of oil. The chapter is loud about that lamb and quiet about which of the other two animals is the sin offering and which is the burnt offering. It just says the priest offers them in that order, after the blood and the oil.

Verse 13 stops to say the trespass offering is most holy, the same as the sin offering, and then the blood from that lamb goes where nothing else on the man has gone. The priest puts it on the tip of the man's right ear, the thumb of his right hand and the great toe of his right foot. He pours oil into his own left palm, sprinkles some of it seven times before the Lord with his right finger, and puts more oil on those same three places, on top of the blood. Whatever is left goes on the man's head. A most holy thing is on the ear of a man who spent the week outside his own tent, and the verses leave that sitting there.

I wrote about those same three places in August, when Moses put blood on Aaron and his sons in Leviticus 8: Aaron Barely Does Anything on Ordination Day. A man who'd been outside the camp and a man being set apart for the altar get the same marks. Hearing, working and walking is the lesson people reach for, and it's a decent lesson, but I can't find it in the verses.

The sequence differs from Aaron's first morning of offerings in Leviticus 9: Fourteen Verses Before the Fire, which runs a sin offering and then a burnt offering before the day can go anywhere else. This day puts the trespass lamb and the oil first, and the sin offering only comes after the man's ear is marked. Verse 20 is the third time the chapter says he shall be clean, and by then he has stood at the door with animals.

Verses 21 to 32 are the part of the bill I trust most. "If he be poor, and cannot get so much," he brings one lamb instead of three. It's still the trespass offering, still waved, still for an atonement. The flour drops from three tenth deals to one, and the log of oil doesn't drop at all. Two turtledoves or two young pigeons take the place of the ewe and the extra he lamb, one as a sin offering and one as a burnt offering, "such as he is able to get." That phrase turns up three times in eleven verses, as if the writer didn't want a priest improvising a higher price on the spot.

The blood and oil still go on the ear, the thumb and the toe and the rest of the oil still goes on his head. A man who has spent however long outside the camp isn't going to have three unblemished lambs waiting, so the law keeps what touches his body and lets the other animals become birds. Verse 32 calls it "the law of him in whom is the plague of leprosy, whose hand is not able to get that which pertaineth to his cleansing," and it ends at the same door.

What does the priest do with a plagued house?

Verse 33 starts over, and this time the Lord speaks to Aaron as well as Moses.

When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession;

Leviticus 14:34

"I give" and "I put" sit in the same verse with the same speaker. The land is a gift and the plague in the wall is something he says he puts there, and I don't have a softer verb to swap in. A tent in the wilderness has no plastered wall, so this half of the chapter has to wait until they have houses. That's a practical reason, and it doesn't make "I put" any milder.

The owner comes to the priest and says, "It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house." He hedges twice in one sentence and he doesn't get to name it. Before the priest looks, the house is emptied, "that all that is in the house be not made unclean." The clothes and the pots aren't being inspected. They're being carried out of the way, because a failed wall would make them unclean. A family could stand in the street with their furniture for a look that finds nothing, and the verse still gives the order. We had a brown stain spread across the garage ceiling one spring, and I stood under it with a flashlight a long while before I mentioned it to Melissa, so I understand the owner's "it seemeth."

What the priest looks for is "hollow strakes, greenish or reddish," sunk lower than the wall. If he sees them he steps back out to the door and shuts the house for seven days, which is the same habit as last week's chapter. Look, wait, look again. If it has spread by the seventh day, the stones that have it come out and go to an unclean place outside the city, the house is scraped inside all the way around, and the dust goes out of the city too. I'd have left that dust in a pile by the foundation. Then other stones go in with other mortar and the house is plastered.

If it breaks out again after all that, the priest looks once more. Spread means "a fretting leprosy," the same term chapter 13 uses for a patch in cloth, and this time the house comes down, stones and timber and every bit of the mortar, carried out of the city. The first repair left the timber standing and swapped only the bad stones. The second finding takes the beams too, and the chapter has no third repair.

While the house is shut, anyone who walks in is unclean until evening, and anyone who sleeps or eats there washes his clothes. Leviticus 11 and the Pulled Pork Sandwich already had that evening clock for touching the wrong dead animal. A shut house borrows it for a person who only steps inside, and adds the laundry if he treats the place like a place to live.

If the plaster holds and the plague hasn't spread, the priest pronounces the house clean "because the plague is healed," which is a strange thing to say about a wall. Then come two birds, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop again, one bird killed over running water, the living one dipped with the rest and used to sprinkle the house seven times. Then he lets that bird go out of the city into the open fields, and he makes "an atonement for the house."

Atonement is the word the man's birds never get. For him it waits for the lamb and the oil on the eighth day. The house has no eighth day and no lamb, so the birds are the whole ending, and the word comes right there as the bird leaves the city.

What the closing verses say the law is for

Verses 54 to 56 gather the subject up: every manner of plague of leprosy, the scall, the leprosy of a garment and of a house, a rising, a scab, a bright spot. Then the purpose, in one line.

To teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean: this is the law of leprosy.

Leviticus 14:57

A garment, a man and a wall are all under it. The symbol of sinfulness can stay in the seminary guide. I'd rather have the procedure, since it's what a priest could actually follow on a given morning, and verse 57 is willing to say plainly what all of it was written down to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was biblical leprosy the disease we call leprosy now?

I don't use the modern name when I read this chapter. The same law covers a scall, a spot in wool or linen and streaks in a stone wall, and one bacterial illness doesn't do all of that. The Hebrew word is tzara'at, the old Greek translation used a word for scaly skin, and the medical writing I've read says Hansen's disease isn't known to have been common in Canaan in this period. A doctor can have the modern word.

Who actually performs the cleansing?

Mostly the priest does it, and the man is passive at the start, since he is brought and the priest goes out, looks, commands the birds, kills one, sprinkles and pronounces. The man washes his own clothes, shaves his own head and washes himself, twice, a week apart. The part that sounds like a bath is his. The part that decides anything is the priest's.

Does a poor man get a smaller cleansing?

Smaller bill, same door and same atonement. The trespass lamb and the oil stay, so the ear, thumb and toe are still marked, and verse 31 has the priest make an atonement for him just as he does for the man with three lambs. I don't read that as a partial welcome.

Was the plague in the walls mold?

People say mold, and people say dry rot, and both are guesses with more confidence than verse 37 has. It gives hollow streaks, greenish or reddish, lower than the wall's surface, and then a week to see whether they spread. What's written down is a sequence: empty the house, shut it for seven days, scrape it if it spreads, tear it down if it comes back. Naming the organism wouldn't change a step of that.

What if he never gets healed?

Chapter 14 has no rite at all for that man, because it opens on the day of his cleansing, which assumes the day comes, and if it doesn't he is still where chapter 13 left him, dwelling alone outside the camp. Last Wednesday I wrote about the priest spending most of that chapter waiting, and this chapter is the other door. Some people in the law never reach it, and I find that harder to read than anything in the house section.

— D.