Saturday, November 7, 2020

Numbers 5:1-10 comments: putting a leper out of the camp along with those contaminated by a corpse

 

Numbers 5:1 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2  Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: 3  Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell. 4  And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel. 5  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6  Speak unto the children of Israel, When a man or woman shall commit any sin that men commit, to do a trespass against the LORD, and that person be guilty; 7  Then they shall confess their sin which they have done: and he shall recompense his trespass with the principal thereof, and add unto it the fifth part thereof, and give it unto him against whom he hath trespassed. 8  But if the man have no kinsman to recompense the trespass unto, let the trespass be recompensed unto the LORD, even to the priest; beside the ram of the atonement, whereby an atonement shall be made for him. 9  And every offering of all the holy things of the children of Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. 10  And every man’s hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man giveth the priest, it shall be his.

 

Here, I need to discuss leprosy again, which was done in the comments on Leviticus 13.

 

“Leprosy in early modern English, the language of the King James era, included many malignant skin diseases. Neither the Hebrews of 3,000 BC nor the translators of the King James era of 1600 would have restricted it to what it is called today, Hansen’s Disease, named after the Norwegian doctor, Gerhard Hansen, who identified the bacterial agent that causes it in 1873. But, don’t read that back into the Bible. Leprosy would have been a much broader umbrella in 1611 as well as in the millennia before that. In the 1600s even Elephantiasis, caused by a parasite, was regarded as a type of Leprosy.

So, modernists should stop criticizing the Bible by saying that this or that is not a symptom of Leprosy but of some other illness. Just think malignant, perhaps contagious, skin disease like they would have thought.

Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Leviticus 13, made two very interesting points. The first was, “Concerning the plague of leprosy we may observe in general, 1. That it was rather an uncleanness than a disease; or, at least, so the law considered it, and therefore employed not the physicians but the priests about it.” He also wrote about this Leprosy in the Bible as being different than what we consider Leprosy in modern times, “That it is a plague not now known in the world; what is commonly called the leprosy is of a quite different nature. This seems to have been reserved as a particular scourge for the sinners of those times and places.” 

 

The priests here are doing double-duty, as diviners of ritually clean and unclean as well as public health workers. Egypt, from whence the Hebrews had escaped, had priests who were also doctors mixing magic and medicine although certainly not all Egyptian priests were physicians. Many sources report that Leprosy is first mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus manuscript from around 1550BC. The Hebrews probably picked up the potential for Leprosy from their stay in Egypt.

Deuteronomy 28:27  The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

 

But, the potential for Leprosy, the presence of bacterium or parasites, does not mean that everyone will get it or everyone would. There is a reason why some contract a disease that many others were exposed to but didn’t contract. Was it a punishment for sin or was this, like Job’s affliction, allowed for reasons we cannot know in this life but simply must trust God in regard? This Leprosy underscores that there is a discrimination, a judgment between clean and unclean.”

Also…

 

“There are interesting sermon possibilities in these passages about the Plague of Leprosy. One can imagine …that sin which we thought was conquered arises up again in a time of distress or carelessness and so forth.

But, we should be careful about forcing the context to justify something we want to say, as Fundamentalists do, putting the Bible’s stamp of approval on some social condition of the past that we wish would come back. Many commentators have tried to use this chapter to explain society’s ills and while there are many interesting sermon possibilities on Leprosy and sin we must remember that these instructions were specific to the Hebrews under the  Law and had as much a physical application as they did a spiritual in the following of God’s commands as He separated them from Egypt and the rest of the heathen world. This should reinforce to us how vile the ancient world had become, how wicked their religion and how diseased their bodies could be.

Some scientists who study Syphilis, the sexually transmitted disease, conclude that some of what was diagnosed as Leprosy before modern times may have been that dreaded disease. I bring this up because of the sexual practices of ancient religion which you and I have seen in our study and while some scientists believe that Europeans contracted Syphilis from their New World adventures in the Americas these other scientists report that there is sufficient archaeological and documentary evidence from ancient times to insist that there was always Syphilis in the Old World and that it was sometimes diagnosed as Leprosy.

Is this Plague of Leprosy including diseases from the lack of understanding of sanitation and from the practices in pagan temples making them not much more than houses of both heterosexual and homosexual prostitution? Whether the disease we know today as Syphilis was present or not could this have also been sexually transmitted diseases as well as Leprosy which produce visible skin lesions?”

And…

 

“Diseases can be contracted through contact with infected clothing or reusable grocery bags and the like today as evidenced by two papers I read recently about a soccer team who all become infected with a stomach illness and airline staff who become infected by clothing worn by infected people. My point is that infected clothing can make a healthy person sick. Sources I have read said that even what we call Leprosy today, Hansen’s Disease, can be contracted indirectly through contaminated clothing.”

So, lepers, anyone with a running issue from disease, or anyone who has been, “defiled by the dead,” is to be put out from the camp. What does it mean to be defiled by the dead?

 

Numbers 19:11 ¶  He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. 12  He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but

if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 13  Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him. 14  This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. 15  And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean. 16  And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17  And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel: 18  And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave: 19  And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even. 20  But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean. 21  And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even. 22  And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.

 

They were put out of the camp until cleansed. We all can understand from our modern knowledge of epidemiology how the handling of the corpses of loved ones can infect someone with Ebola or the Spanish Flu or any number of other diseases in an unsanitary environment with no antibiotics. Imagine like in 1345 at the Mongol siege of Caffa when the catapulted putrefying corpses over the walls into the city the disease and plague contagion that was spread, perhaps playing a part in the rise of the infamous Black Plague that was transferred by fleas or rats.

Commentators write that what is said here in verse 6 and after is a reference to a sin against a person which is regarded as a sin against God and the restitution required. If the victim is dead and there is no near kinsman to receive the restitution then it is given to the Lord via the Lord’s priest. It will then belong to the priest and cannot be demanded back.

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