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Leviticus 13:1. This law is directed to Aaron as well as Moses, because he and his sons were to be judges, to determine, according to certain rules, what was clean and what unclean.

Leviticus 13:2. A rising, a scab, or bright spot — The leprosy appeared in one of these three forms. Now, as these marks might sometimes be upon the skin when there was no leprosy, rules are here given whereby the priests might discern between a plague of leprosy and the resemblance of it; that accordingly they might pronounce a person clean or unclean. Some of the symptoms of the leprosy here described are of a very extraordinary nature, particularly its infecting houses and garments. This has led several of the learned, Le Clerc in particular, to imagine that Moses’s leprosy was one of those diseases which Providence occasionally inflicts upon mankind in certain ages and countries, as a chastisement for peculiar sins, and to bring them to repentance and reformation. Thus much is certain, that what we now call the leprosy is very different from what went by that name in former times.

Leviticus 13:3. The priest shall look on the plague — In some dubious cases, the priest might find it convenient to take the judgment of physicians, or of persons who understood the theory of diseases better than himself; but, as he was to admit to or exclude from the sanctuary, he alone was to give judgment, and pronounce who were clean or unclean, and, as such, to be admitted or excluded. When the hair is turned white — He begins with the last of the three marks of a leprosy, namely, the bright spot. The reason of the hair’s turning white is thus assigned by Calmet, in his Dissertation on the Leprosy: “The flesh,” says he, “ceasing to receive its proper nourishment from the blood, which gave it its former vivid colour, the hair, which has its root in the corrupted, empoverished glands, becomes likewise ill-nourished, and so grows whitish and slender, like a plant in stony, parched ground.” His flesh — For the leprosy consumed both the skin and the flesh.

Leviticus 13:4. Seven days — For greater assurance; to teach ministers not to be hasty in their judgments, but diligently to search and examine all things beforehand. The plague is here put in the original for the man that hath the plague.

Leviticus 13:6. Dark — Contrary to the white colour of the leprosy. But the word may be rendered, have contracted itself, and thus the opposition seems to be most clear to the spreading of itself. He shall wash his clothes — Though it was no leprosy, to teach us, that no sin is so small as not to need to be washed by the blood of Christ, which was the thing designed by all these washings.

Leviticus 13:9-10. When the plague of leprosy (symptoms thereof) is in a man — If the priest plainly see that it has reached not only the skin, and changed the hair, but eaten into the very flesh, so that he can see the whiteness there, as well as in the skin, he shall look upon it as an evident case, and without shutting him up for further trial, shall judge it a leprosy that has long been breeding, and of the worst kind, and accordingly shall remove the person out of the camp, that he may dwell by himself, Leviticus 13:46.

Leviticus 13:13. If the leprosy have covered all the flesh — It may seem strange that a man who is all over leprous should be pronounced clean, and yet one who is but partially leprous should be unclean. To explain this it has been said, that when the disorder appeared only in some one part, or in a few parts, it discovered the ill humour that lurked within, and withal the inability of nature to expel it; but when it overspread all, it manifested the strength of nature, conquering the distemper, and purging out the ill humours into the outward parts. So that this sort of breaking out was rather a relief to the body than a disease; and there was no danger in the eruption. The most solid account, however, of this matter is, that this kind of leprosy was not infectious, and for that reason, he who was affected with it, is here pronounced clean. In confirmation of this we are told, that this white, or universal leprosy, is not attended with an itching, as in the other kinds.

Leviticus 13:14. When raw — (Hebrew, when living) flesh appeareth in him — That is, when some of the flesh appears in its sound and natural state, the rest of the skin being white. This was a token of nature’s being unable to throw out all the leprous humour into the skin, and of its working inwardly. Consequently the person in that state was to be pronounced unclean.