Leviticus 13:39, commentary and pictures

Leviticus 13:39 gives the priest's test for a skin condition: if the bright spots in the skin of the flesh are darkish white, it is a freckled spot growing in the skin, and the person is clean. The verse belongs to the laws in Leviticus 12-15 for determining visible bodily cleanliness, by which the priest examined skin conditions and declared a person clean or unclean. Even slight symptoms of suspected leprosy led to quarantine until the case became clearer, while confirmed leprosy meant permanent separation from home and friends. What the leper touched was treated as unclean, and he had to call out a warning to others.

This declared visible cleanness prepared a person or object for later cleansing with blood in the sanctuary. The leprosy laws of the chapter are a fitting type and figure that prefigures sin. As so figured, sin is a terrible and dreadful moral disease, widespread and infectious, that cannot be cured by human means and does not heal by itself. It eats away at its victim, pollutes the inner life while making the outer person shameful, spreads its pollution to others through the sinner's influence, and needs to be healed.

Leprosy in these laws serves as a type of mortal sin, and the healing of lepers shows power to heal sin. The verse belongs to the laws of sanitation promulgated through Moses that still stand at the head of all sanitary law and surpass modern sanitary knowledge. Their advanced character is conclusive evidence of the divine inspiration that guided Moses. The chapter belongs to laws of cleansing that apply to bodily health and purity, and obedience to such cleansing instruction is part of preparing clean vessels for God's Spirit.