And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald; yet is he clean.
Leviticus 13:40 belongs to the laws regulating uncleanness and cleansing in Leviticus 12-15, specifically to Leviticus 13-14 concerning leprosy and related conditions. Baldness by itself is clean, for loss of hair from the head does not make a person ceremonially unclean, and it is distinguished from the skin disease addressed in the chapter. The regulations provided for examining suspected leprosy with quarantine while the condition was assessed and permanent separation from home and friends when leprosy was confirmed. They give guidance about contagious diseases and infections in buildings and include proper precautions even though God is the one who heals.
The law required a person or object to be visibly clean before the sanctuary's actual cleansing by blood, so outward, observable cleanliness was distinct from the later cleansing that reconciled the sanctuary. The laws of sanitation promulgated by Moses still stand at the head of sanitary law, and their enduring superiority proves divine inspiration guided Moses. Leprosy is a fitting type, picture, and prefigure of sin as a terrible moral disease embracing every kind of evil thing, even mortal sin.
Like leprosy, sin is widespread, incurable by human means, infectious, destructive, and rooted within while also showing itself outwardly, and it never gets well of itself. The healing of leprosy shows the power of Jesus Christ to heal, and leprosy still present in the Holy Land in its utmost loathsomeness is of the same type as in scriptural days and so bears witness to scriptural truth. Sin pollutes human life like leprosy pollutes the body, the sinner contaminates the very atmosphere, introduces pollution where all before was comparative purity, and his society is calculated to lead others to sin, giving more reason to fear such influence than to fear the infection of the leper.
Leviticus 13:40 belongs to the laws regulating uncleanness and cleansing in Leviticus 12-15, specifically to Leviticus 13-14 concerning leprosy and related conditions. Baldness by itself is clean, for loss of hair from the head does not make a person ceremonially unclean, and it is distinguished from the skin disease addressed in the chapter. The regulations provided for examining suspected leprosy with quarantine while the condition was assessed and permanent separation from home and friends when leprosy was confirmed. They give guidance about contagious diseases and infections in buildings and include proper precautions even though God is the one who heals.
The law required a person or object to be visibly clean before the sanctuary's actual cleansing by blood, so outward, observable cleanliness was distinct from the later cleansing that reconciled the sanctuary. The laws of sanitation promulgated by Moses still stand at the head of sanitary law, and their enduring superiority proves divine inspiration guided Moses. Leprosy is a fitting type, picture, and prefigure of sin as a terrible moral disease embracing every kind of evil thing, even mortal sin.
Like leprosy, sin is widespread, incurable by human means, infectious, destructive, and rooted within while also showing itself outwardly, and it never gets well of itself. The healing of leprosy shows the power of Jesus Christ to heal, and leprosy still present in the Holy Land in its utmost loathsomeness is of the same type as in scriptural days and so bears witness to scriptural truth. Sin pollutes human life like leprosy pollutes the body, the sinner contaminates the very atmosphere, introduces pollution where all before was comparative purity, and his society is calculated to lead others to sin, giving more reason to fear such influence than to fear the infection of the leper.