13:1-17 The plague of leprosy was an uncleanness, rather than a disease. Christ is said to cleanse lepers, not to cure them. Common as the leprosy was among the Hebrews, during and after their residence in Egypt, we have no reason to believe that it was known among them before. Their distressed state and employment in that land must have rendered them liable to disease. But it was a plague often inflicted immediately by the hand of God. Miriam's leprosy, and Gehazi's, and king Uzziah's, were punishments of particular sins; no marvel there was care taken to distinguish it from a common distemper. The judgment of it was referred to the priests. And it was a figure of the moral pollutions of men's minds by sin, which is the leprosy of the soul, defiling to the conscience, and from which Christ alone can cleanse. The priest could only convict the leper, (by the law is the knowledge of sin,) but Christ can cure the sinner, he can take away sin. It is a work of great importance, but of great difficulty, to judge of our spiritual state. We all have cause to suspect ourselves, being conscious of sores and spots; but whether clean or unclean is the question. As there were certain marks by which to know it was leprosy, so there are marks of such as are in the gall of bitterness. The priest must take time in making his judgment. This teaches all, both ministers and people, not to be hasty in censures, nor to judge anything before the time. If some men's sins go before unto judgment, the sins of others follow after, and so do men's good works. If the person suspected were found to be clean, yet he must wash his clothes, because there had been ground for the suspicion. We have need to be washed in the blood of Christ from our spots, though not leprosy spots; for who can say, I am pure from sin?
And if the priest see that, behold, the scab spreadeth in the skin,.... Is not at a stay, as when he looked at it a second and third time:
then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; a leprous person; to be absolutely so, as Jarchi expresses it; and so obliged to the birds (to bring birds for his cleansing), and to shaving, and to the offering spoken of in this section, as the same writer observes:
it is a leprosy: it is a clear and plain case that it was one, and no doubt is to be made of it, it is a spreading leprosy: as sin is; it spreads itself over all the powers and faculties of the soul, and over all the members of the body; and it spreads more and more in every stage of life, unless and until grace puts a stop to it.
