Another Passage Veggie-Tales Won't Cover

Leviticus 14: 1-32

OK, this is a bizarre section. I would expect to find this in an explanation of voodoo practices and not so much in a Levitical discussion of leprosy cleansing. If the diseased person is proclaimed healed (by the priest leaving camp and checking him out) the priest decrees that two live clean birds, some cedar wood, some scarlet yarn and hyssop (a minty, European herb) all be brought for a cleansing ceremony.

So you take the birds and kill one of them over a clay pot of fresh water. Then you dip the live bird along with the wood, yarn , and hyssop into the blood of the dead bird. The formerly leperous person is then sprinkled seven times. I have no idea how, or with what. Do they wave the live bird now covered in dead bird's blood over this guy? Is it all mixed together and sprinkled? Is there any scenario where this isn't totally crazy?

The soon-to-be-clean guy shaves his hair, washes his clothes, and bathes in water. Perhaps doing this more regularly would have helped with his problem in the first place. It would at least have made him a little more popular. At this point he can enter camp- but not his tent for seven more days. Then he shaves the rest of his hair- his head, beard, eyebrows, and the rest- like Bob Geldoff in The Wall. More clothes washing, more bathing- and finally he's clean.

Then come the post cleansing sacrifices. He brings two male lambs and one ewe lamb, some of a flour and oil mixture and two-thirds of a pint of oil. In one way or another this covers the guilt offering and the wave offering.

More weirdness. Some of the blood from the guilt offering goes on the right ear lobe, right thumb, and right big toe of the one being cleansed. Then the oil gets sprinkled seven times (from the priest dipping his right index finger in oil pured into his left palm). Then using his palm, the priest uses oil to cover the blood on the ex-leper's earlobe, thumb and toe. The rest of the oil goes on his head.

Then a sin offering and a burnt offering. There's a reduced rate for the poor involving one lamb and doves or pigeons instead of so many lambs. A very similar process happens for the poor man to make him clean.

There maybe some metaphoric significance to the sacrifices or the ritual or the ear lobe- but it seems to me like more burdening for a group of people who are already quite burdened at this point. But perhaps if you were relieved of the prospect of finishing out your days in isolation as a leper, this procedure would seem like next to nothing in comparison.

I'm glad I'm not an Israelite.