Leviticus 14:45

_WHEN YE BE COME INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN, WHICH I GIVE TO YOU FOR A POSSESSION, AND I PUT THE PLAGUE OF LEPROSY IN A HOUSE OF THE LAND OF YOUR POSSESSION;_ Leprosy in a house. This law was prospective, not being to come into operation until the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan. The words, "I put the leprosy," has led many to think that this plague was a judicial infliction from heaven for the sins of the owner; while others do not regard it in this light, it being common in Scripture to represent God as doing that which He only permits in His providence to be done. Assuming it to have been a natural disease, a new difficulty arises as to whether we are to consider that the house had become infected by the contagion of leprous occupiers; or that the leprosy was in the house itself. It is evident that the latter was the true state of the case from the furniture being removed out of...

33-53 The leprosy in a house is unaccountable to us, as well as the leprosy in a garment; but now sin, where that reigns in a house, is a plague there, as it is in a heart. Masters of families should be aware, and afraid of the first appearance of sin in their families, and put it away, whatever it is. If the leprosy is got into the house, the infected part must be taken out. If it remain in the house, the whole must be pulled down. The owner had better be without a dwelling, than live in one that was infected. The leprosy of sin ruins families and churches. Thus sin is so interwoven with the human body, that it must be taken down by death....

Verse Leviticus 14:45. _HE SHALL BREAK DOWN THE HOUSE_] "On the suspicion of a house being infected, the priest examined it, and ordered it to be shut up seven days; if he found the plague, or signs of the plague, (hollow streaks, greenish or reddish,) were not spread, he commanded it to be shut up seven days more. On the _thirteenth_ day he revisited it; and if he found the infected place _dim_, or gone away, he took out that part of the wall, carried it out to an unclean place, mended the wall, and caused the whole house to be new plastered. It was then shut up a third seven days, and he came on the _nineteenth_, and if he found that the plague was broken out anew, he ordered the house to be pulled down." See _Ainsworth_. From all this may we not learn a lesson of instruction? If the means made use of by God and his ministers for the conversion of a sinn...

This section is separated from that on leprosy in clothing Leviticus 13:47 with which it would seem to be naturally connected, and is placed last of all the laws concerning leprosy, probably on account of its being wholly prospective. While the Israelites were in the wilderness, the materials of their dwellings were of nearly the same nature as those of their clothing, and would be liable to the same sort of decay. They were therefore included under the same law. I PUT THE PLAGUE - Yahweh here speaks as the Lord of all created things, determining their decay and destruction as well as their production. Compare Isaiah 45:6; Jonah 4:7;...

EXPOSITION THE LEPROSY OF A HOUSE, AND ITS CLEANSING (Leviticus 14:33-3). The subject of leprosy in houses must be regarded from the same point of view as that of leprosy in clothes. The regulations respecting it are not sanitary laws, as Lange represents them, but rest, as Keil argues, upon an ideal or symbolical basis. The same thought is attached to all species of uncleanness. Something—it matters not what—produces a foul and repulsive appearance in the walls of a house. That is in itself sufficient to make that house unclean; for whatever is foul and repulsive is representative of moral and spiritual defilement, and therefore is itself symbolically defiling and defiled. It has been suggested that the special cause of the affection of the houses i

AND HE SHALL BREAK DOWN THE HOUSE,.... Order it to be pulled down, and demolished entirely, that is, the priest shall give such orders; but Gersom thinks this was to be done by the owner of the house, and that he was to do it himself, and have no associate with him in it: THE STONES OF IT, AND THE TIMBER THEREOF, AND ALL THE MORTAR OF THE HOUSE; and, according to the Jewish canons, a house was not defiled with the plague of leprosy, unless it had in it stones, and timber, and dust, or earth; a house which had not stones, timber, and dust in it, and the plague appeared in it, even if anyone after that brought in stones; timber, and dust, it was clean p: AND HE SHALL CARRY [THEM] FORTH OUT OF THE CITY UNTO AN UNCLEAN PLACE: such materials were not to be made use of to rebuild that house, or to be employed in the building of any other. This house may be an emblem of a visible church of Go...

4. THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER CHAPTER 14 _ 1. The cleansing of the leper (Leviticus 14:1)_ 2. Leprosy in the house and its purification (Leviticus 14:33) The cleansing and restoration of the leper is full of significance, foreshadowing once more the blessed work of our Saviour. Two parts in this ceremonial are to be noticed first of all. The first thing done was to restore the leper among the people from whom he had been put away. The second part of the ceremony restored him fully to communion with God. The first part was accomplished on the first day; the second part on the eighth day. A careful distinction must be made between the healing and the cleansing. All the ceremonies could not heal the leper. Jehovah alone could heal that loathsome disease. But after the

11- 15. RITUAL CLEANLINESS AND UNCLEANLINESS. Leviticus 11, Animals; Leviticus 12, Childbirth; Leviticus 13, Skin diseases (including tainted garments); Leviticus 14:1, Purgation for skin diseases; Leviticus 14:33, Leprosy in houses, and general conclusion to the Law; Leviticus 15, Issues. Probably to most modern readers, this section is the least intelligible in the book. We must consider it (_a)_ in its ethnological and (_b)_ its specifically Hebrew aspect, (_a)_ These laws are properly taboos. The term is Polynesian, signifying what is in itself, or artificially, forbidden, either for the whole community, or else for common people, or priests, or kings (p. 629). Taboos may relate to places, or to the sexes, or to certain ages. Certain kinds of food m

_Leprosy in houses_(33 53) Nothing definite is known about these appearances on the walls of a house, which are here described as leprosy. It was regarded as a special visitation of God (Leviticus 14:34, -I put the plague"); the Jews believed that the plague was peculiar to Palestine and the chosen people, and was not found in the houses of foreigners. The owner of the house must say -There seemeth to me …" (Leviticus 14:35): the decision whether the house is leprous rests with the priest. The order to empty the house before the priest comes to inspect shews that there is no fear of contagion. It has been suggested that the appearances were due to damp, or decay, or the growth of some vegetable matter. The diagnosis is similar to that for leprosy in man; the remedy is to remove the stones in

HE SHALL BREAK DOWN THE HOUSE, &C.— Bishop Patrick observes, that all this may be considered as a figurative representation of God's proceedings toward the Jews, when they rebelled against him; for, 1st, some of them were removed, (Leviticus 14:40.) then the whole nation by degrees was very much impaired, (Leviticus 14:42.) till, at last, their degeneracy growing universal, they were all carried captive out of their own land....