Bully's Blog

All of the arcane “personal” stipulations in the Torah find their fulfilment in the corporate worship of Israel. Just as the sacrifices were to be without blemish, so also were Israelites to be spotless if they were to stand before God. But the rules for the identification, quarantining and ceremonial cleansing of leprosy only begin with the skin of the worshiper in the wilderness. They then move to the garment, and finally to the house in the Promised Land. A failure in personal holiness would lead eventually to a corruption of corporate worship. James Jordan writes:

Jesus’ statement that the stones of the building will not be left attached to one another hearkens back to the rules for house affiction (“lepr­osy”) in Leviticus 14:33-53.¹On the translation of “leprosy” with “affliction,” see Jordan’s monograph, The Touch of Affliction: The “Plague” of “Leprosy” in Leviticus 13. Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper 31 (Niceville, FL: Biblical Horizons, 2002). If the affliction in the walls of the house proves irremedia­ble, the priest is to “tear down the house, its stones, and its timbers, and all the plaster of the house, and he shall take them outside the city to an unclean place” (Leviticus 14:45).

From the verse just cited, it is clear that house affliction only applies to a house inside a walled city. An examination of the history of the applica­tion of the laws of house affliction sheds considerable light on certain events in the gospels, for the primary house to come under these rules is the temple.

In Ezekiel 8:7-13, Ezekiel is told to dig into the wall around the temple. In his vision the wall is hollow and has a chamber inside of it. All over the inner walls of this chamber are carved various idols, and the leaders of Israel are worshipping them secretly.²These people were not actually worshipping idols or engaging in idolatry. We know from Jeremiah that they had turned the temple itself into an idol, and regarded Yahweh as their own national god who would always protect them. What Ezekiel sees in his vision is their true hearts, not their outward beliefs. This is a graphic picture of house affliction, the “greenish or reddish” marks under (within) the walls of a house.

Of more immediate relevance is Zechariah’s fifth Night Vision (Zecha­riah 5:1-4). The prophet sees a huge flying scroll, having the dimen­sions of the Holy Place of the tabernacle. The Holy Place was a symbol of the  rmament heavens, and this scroll appears in the firmament. It goes forth from God, as the “eyes” of Yahweh have gone forth in the previous vision (3:10; & 1:10-11; 6:1-8). From Genesis 1, we know that God’s eyes evaluate what He sees. His eyes are also, thus, an evaluating scroll, the law of God in its judging function. The scroll measures every house in Israel to see if it conforms to the holy dimen­sions of the Holy Place. Two specific sins are judged: false swearing (wor­ship) and theft. We have noted this pair already in our study. The houses of those who swear falsely and/or who steal will be consumed with house affliction, according to Zechariah 5:4, “[The curse] will dwell with­in that house and consume it with its timber and stones.”

When we come to Jesus’ “cleansing” of the temple, we find that He condemns the people for these two sins: “My house should be a house of prayer (true swearing), but you have made it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:13). Later on, in Revelation 13:14-16, the “Beast Image,” which is the idolatrous worship house of the apostates, also requires false worship and a mark that governs buying and selling.

We know from a full reading of the gospels, Matthew through John, that Jesus “cleansed” the temple twice. As the living Scroll or Word of God, He arrived at the house two times. This is in accor­dance with the laws of house affliction in Leviticus 14. Making allowances for a general application of the principles in Leviticus 14, we can see Jesus fulfilling them as follows:

First, if greenish or reddish marks appear inside the walls of a house, the priest is to quarantine it for seven days. This corresponds to Jesus’ first inspection of the temple, record­ed in John 2:14-22. From that time, Jesus did not go again to the temple, as far as we are told, until His final arrival in Jerusa­lem.

Second, if after a week of quarantine the reddish and/or greenish marks have spread, the priest is to tear out the stones and plaster that have the marks in them, and repair the place in the wall. This corresponds to Jesus’ second temple inspection, as recorded in Matthew 21:12-14. Jesus drove out the bad stones, for the temple is made of human stones, and then restored the blind and lame, restoring the hu­man temple. This dual action of tearing down the bad and restoring the crippled as a true human temple is a microcosm of Jesus’ entire earthly ministry of restoring Israel – which then falls anew by rejecting Him.

Third, if the affliction reappears in the house, the house is to be torn down complete­ly. Jesus as priest, as Zechariah’s Flying Scroll, comes in the late ad 60s, finds that the temple has not been repaired (i.e., the people are still apostate), and destroys it.³From The End of the World: A Commentary on Matthew 23-25, by James B. Jordan. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com

Further to this, although the Hebrew word translated “leprosy” is indeed a striking, a plague, it seems that it pictured an invasion of the Sanctuary by the serpent.

The linguistic root of the word translated “leprosy” [tsara’ath] may mean “smiting.” The curse of leprosy came as a “stroke,” which aligns it with the plagues the Lord brought upon Egypt at the hand of Moses. This, however, gives us no clue as to what this disease actually was.

The “whiteness” of this condition most certainly links it to the “whiteness” of death. The purification rites for a person contaminated by a corpse are similar to those for a person with “leprosy.” Moreover, when Miriam is struck with the condition, Aaron begs that she not become like a still born child “whose flesh is half eaten away.”

However, there is another feature of this “leprosy” which traces this “death” back to Eden. Whereas the Hebrew word denotes being struck with a plague, it is described in Akkadian with a word which means “scaly” or “covered with dust.” Scales and dust tie it to the curse upon the serpent in Genesis 3. Leviticus 13 also refers to a “dry scall,” so rather than naming an actual disease it describes a symptom: scaled skin.⁴Jacob Milgrom translates the biblical “leprosy” as “scale disease” in his Leviticus 1-16, 768–889. In his Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, Oppenheim quotes the word which has been translated leprosy as “covered with dust” or “scaly.” The Akkadian word “epqu”, which was translated leprosy in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, also means “scaly.”

This might help explain the language connected to it in 2 Kings 5, where the leprosy of the faithful, obedient Gentile is transferred to the lying, thieving Israelite, as his ironic Covenant “inheritance”: “The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow. (2 Kings 5:27 [KJV])⁵From “Scales of Justice: The Covenantal Significance and Serpentine Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy’” in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.

This explains the references to the apostate High Priesthood as a “man of sin.” This representative of humanity had allowed the serpent to take dominion of the Garden. Following his expulsion from the heavenly court at the ascension of Christ (Revelation 12:9), Satan took up residence in the replica of the Sanctuary on earth (signified in Revelation 8:10 as the Edenic “springs and waters”). By the time Christ returned to inspect the Temple, the house was indeed “serpentine,” filled with demons (Matthew 12:43-45).