the whole description there is not the slightest hint of any such transmission, but the inhabitants, on the contrary, are spoken of as clean, i.e., free from leprosy, and only those who went into the house, or slept in the house after it had been shut up as suspicious, are pronounced unclean (Lev 14:46, Lev 14:47), though even they are not said to have been affected with leprosy. The only thing that can be gathered from the signs mentioned in Lev 14:37 is, that the house-leprosy was an evil which calls to mind “the vegetable formations and braid-like structures that are found on mouldering walls and decaying walls, and which eat into them so as to produce a slight depression in the surface.”[1]
verses 35-36
When the evil showed itself in a house, the owner was to send this message to the priest, “A leprous evil has appeared in my house,” and the priest, before entering to examine it, was to have the house cleared, lest everything in it should become unclean. Consequently, as what was in the house became unclean only when the priest had declared the house affected with leprosy, the reason for the defilement is not to be sought for in physical infection, but must have been of an ideal or symbolical kind.
verses 37-42
If the leprous spot appeared in “greenish or reddish depressions, which looked deeper than the wall,” the priest was to shut up the house for seven days. If after that time he found that the mole had spread on the walls, he was to break out the stones upon which it appeared, and remove them to an unclean place outside the town, and to scrape the house all round inside, and throw the dust that was scraped off into an unclean place outside the town. He was then to put other stones in their place, and plaster the house with fresh mortar.
verses 43-45
If the mole broke out again after this had taken place, it was a malicious leprosy, and the house was to be pulled down as unclean, whilst the stones, the wood, and the mortar were to be taken to an unclean place outside the town.
verses 46-47
Whoever went into the house during the time that it was closed, became unclean till the evening and had to wash himself; but
- ↑ Cf. Sommer (p. 220), who says, “The crust of many of these lichens is so marvellously thin, that they simply appear as coloured spots, for the most part circular, which gradually spread in a concentric form, and can be rubbed off like dust. Some species have a striking resemblance to eruptions upon the skin. There is one genus called spiloma (spots); and another very numerous genus bears the name of lepraria.”
