Leviticus chapter 13 is entitled “Laws About Leprosy”, but that is misleading. Like autism today, leprosy was a big umbrella diagnosis in the Bible that covers a variety of skin problems. In Leviticus 13 alone, the word leprosy refers to burns, infections, actual leprosy (a chronic disease where ones outer tissue begins to die and fall off), boils, dandruff, and more.
If you have read the New Testament, you know that lepers, those who had actual chronic skin diseases, were not thought of very highly. In fact, they were the social outcasts, the ones who had to cover their faces and shout unclean as others approached them (Leviticus 13:45). They lived very sad and lonely lives outside the camp, and away from the rest of society. But Leviticus 13 was not intended to foster hostility and ostracism toward the suffering. It was meant to communicate the love God has for the suffering.
The key is in Leviticus 13:46, just after we read the humiliating way in which Lepers were to announce their presence, we read these words:
He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Now look at what it says in Exodus 33:7:
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
Do you see it. Lepers were to live outside the camp, the place in which the very dwelling place of God resided! Surely the Israelites caught this connection as they read. God’s intention was to communicate His care for those who are outcast because of their position in society. And it doesn’t end there. The writer of Hebrews sheds even more light on this issue. Look at Hebrews 13:11-13:
… the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.
God dwells in the midst of those who are suffering. Jesus died in their very presence. And we are now called to join with Christ in His suffering for the sake of those who are in most desperate need of true mercy and love. This is the call that Christ has placed on us, to associate with the lowly because He has done the same for us. We may be healthy in body, but without Him, we are all lepers, destined to remain outside the camp and away from the rest of society. But He has welcomed us into His eternal holy city by the blood He shed for us in our midst. Now, we must go in the words of Micah 6:8:
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
We must bring justice to those who are oppressed, love those who are unloveable, and walk humbly in light of the reality of our sinfulness and the amazing Grace that God showed to us when He sent His very own Son to die like a Leper outside the gate so that we might inherit the Kingdom.
Unoriginal Observations 