Leviticus 13:45–46
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that has domesticated God. Our modern sensibilities prefer a God who is more of a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine, whose chief attribute is being nice. But the book of Leviticus will not let us get away with such sentimental nonsense. Leviticus is a splash of ice water to the face of our therapeutic age. Nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than in the laws concerning leprosy. The condition described here, tsara'ath, is not a one-to-one correspondence with what we now call Hansen's disease. It was a broader category of infectious skin diseases, and it also applied to mold or mildew in garments and houses. But its primary function in the ceremonial law was not medical; it was theological. It was a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. It was what sin looks like on the outside.