Bible in 365 Days

Leviticus 14-15

Leviticus 14

The possibility of the restoration of a leper to health was recognized and provision was made accordingly. In the case of the individual, the ceremony was elaborate. The priest must first visit him without the camp. If he found that the man was indeed cured of his leprosy, a religious ceremony initiated the movement of his return to communion. Then ere he was admitted to the camp he must himself be washed and his hair shaved.

After seven days of waiting there was to be another guilt offering, the anointing of the man with blood and oil, after which a sin offering, a burnt offering, and a meal offering were to be presented. Then he was restored to worship.

Once more the strictness of the law is revealed in the instructions given as to the cleansing of the house of the leper, which was to be observed in the time ahead when the people would be dwelling in the land.

The reading of this whole section (chapters 13, 14) impresses the mind with the strictness of the law of God concerning such things. It reveals the interest of God in the physical wellbeing of His people and His unceasing antagonism to everything likely to harm them. In our own day and land the purely Eastern qualities of these laws may seem to have no application, but their permanent values speak with no uncertain sound, teaching us among other things that it is impossible for men to be loyal to God and careless in any measure concerning the laws of sanitation. For example, it is ungodly for a community claiming to be in any sense Christian to tolerate the existence of dwellings which are infected in the slightest degree with what may be harmful to the highest physical condition of the people.

Leviticus 15

Chapter fifteen is a strange and solemn one in many ways, dealing as it does with the law of uncleanness as it applies to the question of issues. As in the case of the laws concerning childbirth, here the mind is once more brought face to face with dread and forceful solemnity to the fact of the defilement of the race.

A careful perusal of these requirements reminds us that the procreative faculties are all underneath the curse as the result of race pollution. Whether the exercise of such faculties be natural or unnatural, in the sight of a God of absolute holiness they are tainted with sin. Therefore, for the people of God, most stringent laws were made for cleansing.

This section has a solemn message to all of us concerning the fact of the pollution of our nature at its very fountainhead and the consequently perpetual necessity for cleansing. Such views may not be popular in our own day and generation, but experience perpetually teaches that to forget them or to neglect their solemn warning issues in disastrous results and a paralysis of the possibility of communion with God.