Infection is Only Skin Deep

Leviticus 13: 1-46

A passage not for the squeamish...or the easily bored.

God spells out requirements for folks who potentially have skin diseases. In general, when rashes or odd skin developments occur, they are to consult priest-types. It's become sort of a tabernacle/health clinic. Although, there's not much treatment going on...just the determining of clean or unclean.

Without getting into too much detail- if you have a rash- go see the priest. If it's a swelling, rash or bright spot, and if the hair has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep- bad news- you are contagious. The priest declares you to be ceremonially unclean. You are isolated for seven days. If there's no change, seven more days of isolation. If it's gone away at that point, you're clean again. If not, you are unclean- and you must live alone outside the camp.

Other scenarios are similar. If disease covers you head to foot, you are clean- but once raw flesh appears you are unclean. When the raw flesh turns white, you are clean again...congratulations.

If you have a boil that heals and it leaves a white mark or a reddish-white mark- you have to go to see the priest. If it seems more than skin deep or there's white hair in it- you're unclean. The priest can check again in seven days. Close to the same thing for burn victims.

If a man or woman has a burn on his or her head or chin- and it seems deep and the hair in it is thin and/or yellow, that's gross. And you're also unclean. In fact, it's an unclean itch. But if it's just skin deep and there's not too much black hair in it- you can just be put into isolation- instead of out of the camp. After seven days, if things are looking better, you have to be shaved except for the infected area and then put back into isolation for another week. If it spreads, the priest doesn't even need to look for yellow hair- you're unclean... and probably not too happy about it. But if black hair has grown back in, the itch has healed- and you are clean.

Dull white spots are a harmless rash- get checked out, but you're clean.

Balding men are clean- and quite distinguished, I'm discovering. However, if you have reddish-white sores on your forehead or bald head- uncleanness awaits you.

So the priests are somehow qualified to make medical determinations. And these determinations impact not just the health of the person and the community, they dictate the future of the infected person. The person who is suffering isn't usually helped- just relegated to more suffering.

As long as you are infectious- you must wear torn clothes and not take care of your hair (easy if you're bald) cover the lower part of your face and shout UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! when people approach. You also live alone outside of the camp.

This to me is the heart of this passage. What a terrible shock to discover that you've got something on your skin. There aren't a lot of health options for you. And if the priest declared you as unclean, life as you know it drastically changes. You leave behind your family, your friends, your livelihood, in fact everything. Every interaction is a reminder of your unclean state- there's little hope of ever returning to how things were. Life moves on without you.

And maybe it's all a metaphor. Without a savior our boils are infectious- we are truly unclean. We are outcasts who can't repair the state of our damage. Granted, these people haven't caused their state through sin- and much of this seems to be to avoid contagion- but in a very real sense if we were, like they were, without the Messiah- we are isolated, scarred and damaged.

But with Him, the health plan just got a whole lot better.