“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. Both male and female shall be put out, without the camp shall ye put them, that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.” (Num. 5:2,32Command 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: 3Both 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. (Numbers 5:2‑3)) Relationships however close, and friendships however strong, could raise no plea on which disobedience to this command might be justified. “Without the camp,” spoke of the divinely-appointed place for such, “shall ye put them,” expressed the responsibility which rested on all to act aright; and none could excuse themselves from submission to this order, who shared in the privileges belonging to that nation. To the nations around them, God He gave no such injunction; for none but Israel stood before Him on the ground of redemption, and in none but Israel could it be said He dwelt, His presence among them necessitated the removal of the unclean; their position as redeemed involved prompt obedience to the word. “How unnatural,” it might have been said, “thus to act against members of one’s family;” “How uncharitable to put outside the camp ones dearest bosom-friend;” “A merciful God could never require such an act to be done in His name.” Such thoughts as these might have passed through many a mind, and the natural man might have endorsed them as correct; but the one taught of God would see they were wrong. Jehovah had spoken, and He must be obeyed. Claims of kindred and affection must give way before the paramount claims of His holiness.
Deeply solemn was this matter. Certainty, therefore, as to the case was to.be arrived at, before the terrible sentence went forth against the individual, or even the garment, or the house; but when the case was clear, no word in mitigation or extenuation could be received. How the disease had been contracted, by willful or accidental contact, was nothing; its hated presence had been manifested, and judgment must accordingly take its course. The priest saw and pronounced sentence, and forthwith it had to take effect; but, till he could pronounce with certainty, the case was watched. In doubtful cases, after seven days’ confinement, the individual, or garment, or house was examined again. If the plague on the man or in the garment had not spread, another week’s confinement was ordered, and the garment was washed. If, after this, the plague was found to be known by the marks given of it in God’s word, the awful words pronounced by the priest, “it is a leprosy,” betokened the cessation of further forbearance. The man was put outside the camp, and the garment was burnt in the fire. In the case of the house, the diseased stones were taken out, new ones put in their place, and the house plastered with new mortar. If, after that, the disease still manifested its presence, the whole house was to be pulled down, and its stones, timber, and mortar be carried forth outside the city into an unclean place. Thus most careful was the priest to be, that none should be excluded from the camp who ought to be in it, and none be kept inside who ought to be put forth; for with the priest, as having the mind of God, rested the duty of pronouncing that sentence against which we read of no appeal.
But what, it might be asked, was there in the leprosy which drew forth such stringent regulations. It was a contagious disease, committing frightful ravages, destroying by slow degrees and in a loathsome manner the body of its victim. Is this all that we see in it? Were these laws concerning it mere sanitary regulations for the bodily welfare of that large encampment, and quarantine directions as it were for the people when settled in their land? Doubtless there was that in them, but there was more, as the sacrifices to be offered up when the house was clean, or the leper was to be received back, clearly set forth. Leprosy betokened the working of the flesh. In the case of the man it might be an old sore breaking out afresh, or a new one for the first time displaying itself. But it was the working of evil within which thus manifested itself, and, whilst it continued to work, the man was unclean. When, however, he was covered all over with the disease—the priest pronounced him clean. “It is all turned white; he is clean.” The evil within had worked itself out; its activity had ceased. He was clean. The leprosy in the house broke out in the stones thereof (14:40), typical, it would seem, of evil in an assembly, and was connected with the dwelling of the people in the land (34). Leprosy in a garment, that which wraps round the individual, typified something evil in the circumstances in which the man might be moving. This might occur in the wilderness, or in the land. At all cost, the evil must be got rid of; yet nothing more was to be destroyed than was needful to attain that end. But, if the cutting out of the diseased part, and the washing of the garment, sufficed not to arrest the plague, the whole garment must be burnt; so, if need be, all one’s surroundings must be got rid of, by the individual getting out of the circumstances in which he has been involved. In this there was something analogous to the dealing with the house, the diseased stones being first taken out, their places supplied with fresh ones, and the whole plastered anew with mortar, if possible thereby to avert the destruction of the whole building; but should that measure prove ineffectual, the disease having spread among stones hitherto free from it, the whole house had to go-the priest pulled it down. Now, as the garment typifies circumstances surrounding us, and the house an assembly of believers, we can see why, for the cleansing of the garment, washing was ordered without sacrifices; and why, for, the cleansing of the house, sacrifices must be offered up. And, whilst the sacrifices the leper had to bring were more numerous than those offered up for the house—as both represented God’s people cleansed, either an individual or an assembly-we can understand why there were sacrifices common to both, having reference to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
There God’s grace manifests itself. Had the laws concerning leprosy stopped with the injunction for excluding the leper from the camp, and for shutting up the house, God’s holiness would have been cared for; but the individual or house must have been left in perpetual and irremediable uncleanness. Such, however, was not His mind. No compromise could be admitted between holiness and defilement, but He worked that the leprosy should be removed and the individual reinstated into all the privileges of God’s redeemed people. These chapters then illustrate the exercise of discipline on the people of God. It is not the sinner in his natural distance from God that we have before us, for we meet first with the man inside the camp, but put out of it, whilst the leprosy was working in him. It might have been an old leprosy breaking out afresh, or the plague appearing for the first time. Outside the camp must then be his place, though he had his tent inside it all the time (14:8), till the priest was satisfied he was healed, and all the rites connected with his cleansing had been duly performed. For the garment and for the house there was a provision for the plague proving removable; for the individual we read of, nothing of the kind. “All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled,” was God’s provision for the preservation of the camp from uncleanness, whilst the opening word of the following chapter speaks of the days of his cleansing. There might be special cases for which there would be no cure, Gehazi, Uzziah; but none could sit down in an ordinary way and say their case was helpless. And who healed him? Physicians will not do it. The priest, too, in this was powerless. God must deal personally with the leper and effect it; for observe the sacrifice was to be offered up after the priest was satisfied he was healed, and not in order to heal him. “Offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them,” (Mark 1:4444And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. (Mark 1:44).) How the leper was healed is not stated, that was a matter between him and God, as it must always be in what we believe leprosy to pre-figure. Restoration of the soul with God must precede the restoration to one’s place in the assembly. But restoration of the soul with God is a private matter between the soul. and God, restoration to the assembly, as to the camp, is public and before all. The priest pronounces the leper clean, after he saw God had healed him, as he had pronounced him unclean when the evil of the flesh was working. He pronounced on his state, but could not alter it, but God could. So the leper, shunned by his fellow-men, as he cried, “Unclean, unclean,” found an eye resting on him whilst outside the camp, and a heart occupied with him unceasingly. For God was working for his healing.
Healed in mercy, he had to show himself to the priest; and now he has to feel keenly his helpless condition, induced by the leprosy. As yet he is outside the camp, and the priest must go out to him. He knew he was healed, else the priest’s inspection would be of no avail; but the mere fact of his having been healed by God did not give him the right to re-enter the camp of Israel. It is well to see this a rule which still holds good in the government of the assembly of God on earth. There is the secret intercourse between God and the soul, and there is the public acknowledgment of having judged oneself, and the owning before all the only ground on which one can stand in the assembly. This is shadowed out in the action and in the sacrifices which the leper brought. On the first day we read in his sacrifices what the standing is, and the identification with Him who has died and is risen. On the eighth day we see typified the acknowledgment of failure in walk, and re-consecration, as it were, afresh to the service of Him who died for us on the cross. Sovereign grace can restore, as sovereign power healed the leper; but only on the ground of sacrifice was there then, and is there now, a road, for outward reinstallment into the place and privileges of the redeemed company.
The priest, satisfied that he was healed, commanded to be taken for him that was to be cleansed two birds, alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. One bird having been killed over running water, the other was dipped in its blood with the cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop, and the individual was sprinkled with blood seven times, after which the living bird was let loose into the open field. To the cleansed leper this may have been a mysterious rite even the priest may not have been able to interpret it—but to us it has a language, and its voice is one of no uncertain sound. It speaks of death and resurrection—even of His who died and rose again, and of the application of that death in power to the soul by the Holy Ghost through the word. The living bird became identified, by dipping it in the blood and water, with the one which had died; and, flying away from the scene of the death of its fellow, shadowed forth the Lord’s resurrection from the dead. The cedar wood and hyssop seem to be emblematic of the products of nature-comprising, as the two ends of a long chain, all that grows on the earth (see 1 Kings 4:3333And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. (1 Kings 4:33)); the scarlet is an emblem of the glory of the world. All that was of nature, and the glory of the world, he was to view dipped in the blood of the slain bird; as now, what answers to these emblems, should be viewed through the medium of the cross. The cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet were not destroyed, but they appeared, when dipped in the blood and water, in a new light: so should it be with us. That death as a practical truth, when forgotten, must be brought home afresh to the soul in power. So nature has been allowed to work where death should practically have been known; that failure must be judged, and the soul, reminded of it, confess the need of the Lord’s death and resurrection first, and the need, too, of their application to its walk on earth.
(To be continued, if the Lord will.)