(33) And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron.--Whilst the law about the cleansing of restored lepers was addressed to Moses alone (see Leviticus 14:1), the regulations about leprous houses, like those with regard to leprous garments and persons, are for the same reason delivered to Moses and Aaron conjointly. (See Leviticus 13:1.)

OF A HOUSE, AND ITS CLEANSING (verses 33-53). 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 in Canaan was saltpetre exuding from the materials employed in their building, or iron pyrites in the stone used. This may have been so, or more probably it was the growth of some fungus. Whatever it was, the appearance created by it was so similar to that of leprosy in the human body, as to derive its name from the latter by analogy.

14:33-53 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.And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron,.... At the same time as the above laws were delivered concerning the leper, and the cleansing of him, or however immediately upon that; the affair of the leprosy of houses being what belonged to the priest to examine into and cleanse from:

saying; as follows.