Leviticus 13:1 And יהוה spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, 2 When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a שְׂאֵת lifted up of (rising) a scab, or a bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of tzara’at (leprosy); then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests.
Question: What is Tzara’at? Tzara’at (ṣāra’aṯ) is really a sign of an internal moral condition. Though outwardly, tzara’at would seem to be a mysterious skin disease, inwardly, it reveals something about the human condition, from יהוה‘s point of view. Some older translations refer to these skin conditions as tzara’at, and the NIV translates it as infectious skin disease, but these translations are misleading. First of all, the symptoms described in this passage–with much emphasis on small white patches– simply do not correspond to any symptoms of tzara’at or commonly called Hansen’s disease.
Secondly, in Torah the Cohen or priest inspects the affected skin after a week, but Hansen’s disease progresses much too slowly to see a difference in a week. Thirdly, Torah has a very strange prescription for a total outbreak of tzara’at: In Leviticus 13:13: “Then the priest shall consider: and, behold, has covered the tzara’at אֶת־ all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that has אֶת־ the plague: if it has all turned white: he is clean.” That’s a pretty amazing paradox: if a person is totally covered, then he is totally clean! Now this certainly makes little medical sense, right? Yet it is actually a hint about the spiritual nature of the problem. The ancient Rabbis argued that tzara’at refers not to a bodily disease but to a physical manifestation of a spiritual sickness, a punishment designed to show a wrongdoer that he must mend his ways. In other words, tzara’at is not so much a disease as a form of supernatural spiritual discipline. The biblical treatment of tzara’at was complete isolation: Leviticus 13:45 And the leper who has the plague must tear his clothes and uncover his head and cover his mustache and cry, unclean, unclean. 46 As long as he has sores, he will be defiled; he is unclean: he will live in isolation outside the camp. The ancient Rabbis argued that the inward cause tzara’at was sin, particularly anti-social sins, such as lying for selfish ends, sexual immorality, false oaths, pride, and especially slander. In Matthew 15:18-20, we find Yahusha in agreement with the other Rabbis: “18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man.” C-MATS