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Leviticus 14 · a question people ask

Is this the same disease people call leprosy today?

In the text

Leviticus doesn't name any disease we know today, so any match to one goes beyond the text. What the text shows is that its Hebrew word, tsara'at (tap leprosy), covers more than skin. The same word is used for a garment, "the destructive mildew of a garment" (14:55), and for a house, "a spreading mildew in a house" (14:34). The chapter closes by listing what the law covers: "any plague of leprosy, and for an itch, and for the destructive mildew of a garment, and for a house, and for a swelling, and for a scab, and for a bright spot" (14:54-56). The signs the priest looked for on a person are set out in Leviticus 13 (13:2-3).

The verses

““When you have come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in the land of your possession,”
Leviticus 14:34 · World English Bible
“This is the law for any plague of leprosy, and for an itch, and for the destructive mildew of a garment, and for a house, and for a swelling, and for a scab, and for a bright spot; to teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean. This is the law of leprosy.”
Leviticus 14:54-57 · World English Bible
““When a man shall have a swelling in his body’s skin, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes in the skin of his body the plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests. The priest shall examine the plague in the skin of the body. If the hair in the plague has turned white, and the appearance of the plague is deeper than the body’s skin, it is the plague of leprosy; so the priest shall examine him and pronounce him unclean.”
Leviticus 13:2-3 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Leviticus 14

Leviticus 14: In the day of his cleansing

Leviticus 14 heals no one. It brings someone already healed all the way back: the priest goes out of the camp to him, two birds, seven days outside his tent, and on the eighth day blood and oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe, where only priests had been marked before. Jesus sent a cleansed leper to this law: "offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded" (Mark 1:44).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions