Leviticus 15:31
Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them. Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.
The verse commands the separation of the children of Israel from their uncleanness, so that they would not die in their uncleanness by defiling the tabernacle and dwelling of God among them. It belongs to the laws regulating uncleanness and leprosy, including rules of individual purity, and those laws required proper precautions. Its sanitation rules required isolation and cleansing in cases of infectious disease, so that people would be kept from spreading infection to others. The law required outward, visible cleansing before the sanctuary's deeper cleansing by blood, and the defilement that mattered was moral as well as physical.
The sanctuary services and offerings were meant to separate Israel from uncleanness and sin. In the sanctuary service, the blood of the sin-offering testified that sin had defiled the sanctuary even as it spoke pardon to the sinner. Its regulations about uncleanness and defiling the tabernacle are object-lessons emphasizing the exceeding sinfulness of sin everywhere. They are types of Christ, pointing forward like all the slain beasts to the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, which gives new life to these otherwise dry details of laws and regulations and makes them a blessing to the reader.
The verse belongs to the yearly service of the Levitical sanctuary, whose sanctuary, priesthood, and rites were types of Christ and His heavenly priesthood. The yearly service pointed to Christ's once-for-all ministry, and its final-day cleansing of the sanctuary represented the blotting out of sin and a work of judgment. Leprosy in this context is a fitting type of sin. As part of the cleansing laws that prepared ancient Israel to be a clean people, the verse illustrates the need to obey cleansing and health teachings rather than fall away from them as Israel did. That lesson is applied to the remnant in preparing clean vessels to receive the latter rain. Keeping its laws of purification alongside Sabbath observance was a practice maintained by the Sabbatiens.