Leviticus 13:54, commentary and pictures

Leviticus 13:54 belongs to the Mosaic law regulating uncleanness and leprosy, dealing with the examination of plague in cloth and garments and with unsanitary houses and infections remaining in buildings. Its procedure is that the priest commands the thing wherein the plague is to be washed and then shuts it up seven days more, as a required precaution against disease and infectious contamination. In this context of cloth and garments, warp runs lengthwise and woof runs crosswise in woven fabric.

Leprosy, a horrible disease, is a fitting type and prefigure of sin as a terrible moral disease, and the verse belongs to the legal setting used to portray sin's plague-like nature. Sin is the transgression of the law and all unrighteousness, embracing every kind of evil thing. Like leprosy, sin is infectious and contagious, incurable by human means and never getting well of itself, destructive, and rooted within though its effects become visible in a person's actions. Like a leper, the sinner contaminates the very atmosphere and introduces pollution where all before was comparative purity, and his society leads others to sin, so there is more reason to fear his influence than the infection of the leper.

The washing and seven additional days of shutting away made the object visibly clean before the sanctuary's deeper cleansing by blood, with the washing addressing physical uncleanness while the sanctuary's defilement in God's sight was chiefly moral. As part of the cleansing laws given to ancient Israel, the verse presents a cleansing truth that Christians should not abandon, with Israel's failures warning against falling away from health reform and other cleansing truths. The garment law teaches a lesson about Christian dress: prideful or worldly fashions can spread vanity and misrepresent Christ, so believers should follow God's instructions and reject clothing infected with pride, destroying a garment whose disease cannot be removed by washing.