And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying,
The verse opens the chapter's instructions, naming the Lord as their source and Moses and Aaron as those to whom He spoke them. The instructions thus introduced govern bodily discharges and ritual cleanliness, that is bodily uncleanness and purification and individual purity. The chapter stands in the section on uncleanness and leprosy, and it begins the Leviticus 15-17 portion of Leviticus 5-23, which deals largely with laws relating to sacrifices and offerings, the consecration and duties of the priests, and the various feasts of the year. The chapter gives God's rules for dealing with an infectious disease, whose simple requirements of cleanliness and isolation were meant to prevent spreading, so that those who touched the patient, his bed, or his vessel had to wash and remain apart until evening, and the recovered patient had to complete a cleansing period before being declared clean.
The verse introduces a distinction between physical uncleanness and moral defilement, in that the affected person or object had to be made visibly clean before the sanctuary's deeper cleansing by blood, while moral defilement required atonement. The laws are mighty object-lessons emphasizing the exceeding sinfulness of sin everywhere, and leprosy in this connection is a fitting type of sin. They belong to the yearly round of Levitical sanctuary and priestly service closing on the tenth day of the seventh month in the Day of Atonement, when sins remembered in the sanctuary day by day were brought out, placed upon the head of the scapegoat, and sent away to a land of forgetfulness. That round typified Christ's once-for-all ministry in the heavenly sanctuary and the great final judgment-day in which every soul not in living connection with God is cut off, each detail finds its fuller meaning in the sacrifice, life, and work of Jesus Christ, all the connected sacrifices were types of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, and seeing Him in them gives new life to otherwise dry details of laws and makes them a blessing.
The cleansing laws are part of a work of bodily purification and obedience that has a counterpart in health reform, which prepares people to receive God's Spirit. The laws concerning individual purity were similar to laws practiced by the Zulus.
The verse opens the chapter's instructions, naming the Lord as their source and Moses and Aaron as those to whom He spoke them. The instructions thus introduced govern bodily discharges and ritual cleanliness, that is bodily uncleanness and purification and individual purity. The chapter stands in the section on uncleanness and leprosy, and it begins the Leviticus 15-17 portion of Leviticus 5-23, which deals largely with laws relating to sacrifices and offerings, the consecration and duties of the priests, and the various feasts of the year. The chapter gives God's rules for dealing with an infectious disease, whose simple requirements of cleanliness and isolation were meant to prevent spreading, so that those who touched the patient, his bed, or his vessel had to wash and remain apart until evening, and the recovered patient had to complete a cleansing period before being declared clean.
The verse introduces a distinction between physical uncleanness and moral defilement, in that the affected person or object had to be made visibly clean before the sanctuary's deeper cleansing by blood, while moral defilement required atonement. The laws are mighty object-lessons emphasizing the exceeding sinfulness of sin everywhere, and leprosy in this connection is a fitting type of sin. They belong to the yearly round of Levitical sanctuary and priestly service closing on the tenth day of the seventh month in the Day of Atonement, when sins remembered in the sanctuary day by day were brought out, placed upon the head of the scapegoat, and sent away to a land of forgetfulness. That round typified Christ's once-for-all ministry in the heavenly sanctuary and the great final judgment-day in which every soul not in living connection with God is cut off, each detail finds its fuller meaning in the sacrifice, life, and work of Jesus Christ, all the connected sacrifices were types of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, and seeing Him in them gives new life to otherwise dry details of laws and makes them a blessing.
The cleansing laws are part of a work of bodily purification and obedience that has a counterpart in health reform, which prepares people to receive God's Spirit. The laws concerning individual purity were similar to laws practiced by the Zulus.