18. Uncleanness due to skin/covering abnormalities (Lev 13:1-17)

The priests were supposed to check their skin diseases.

πŸ‘‰ Read Leviticus 13:1-17

Who is to examine their skin disease?


Three guidelines can be applied in deciding unclean skin disease. If the spot of a symptom is (             ) than the skin, (                  ) on the spot turned white or different color than black, and it (              ) over the skin after seven days, then it would be a diseased infection and unclean.


He is clean if the disease covers one’s whole body, from head to feet, and (               ) doesn’t appear.


Answers and Meditation

The priest

He is not to heal the disease but to check the uncleanness before the Holy God.

 

deeper, the hair, has spread

Why did God concern about skin disease rather than other serious sicknesses? Their medical knowledge was not like ours these days. Only sicknesses with visible symptoms were considered. Therefore, when the priest diagnoses a man clean, he has no visible (or known) sickness. He is not perfectly clean, but ritually clean and allowed to worship the Lord.

Scab (or rash) doesn't make that person unclean. But it spreads, he is unclean.

raw flesh

Interestingly, if the disease has made his skin all white, he is clean. Only the condition of the raw flesh makes him unclean, which indicates the disease is still developing and contagious.

 

This passage alludes to how God deals with our sinfulness. 

  • God doesn’t require us to be ‘perfect clean’ but humble when our sin is exposed, and we are guilty.
  • God again calls us righteous and allows us to stand before Him when we have overcome the sin in Jesus Christ, even though we still have footprints of sins. Overcoming the sin: confining the sinful nature by the power of the Holy Spirit so that it doesn’t develop nor infect others.

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