Leprosy appearing on the bald head. Though leprosy makes the hair drop off around the leprous spot, baldness is in itself no sign of leprosy, whether at the back or front of the head (Leviticus 13:40, Leviticus 13:41); but as the bald head is a not unusual place for the leprous spot to appear, any eruption upon it is therefore to be watched and tested as before.
The cases for examination having been discussed, the law for the treatment of the man in whom leprosy has been proved to exist is pronounced. The leper in whom the plague is to be ex-eluded from the camp, lest others should contract defilement from him. tie is for the same reason to cry, Unclean, unclean, lest any wayfarer should unwittingly come in contact with him; and his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, these being the signs of mourning for the dead. The bared or disheveled head (see Le Leviticus 10:6) and the covered lip are incidentally mentioned as signs of mourning in Ezekiel 24:17, and the covered upper lip as a mark of shame in Micah 3:7. By the expression, He shall dwell alone, is meant he shall dwell apart from those who were clean. Of course, lepers would naturally associate with each other, and so we find that they actually did (Luke 17:12). As their presence was supposed to defile any place that they entered, they were punished in later times with forty stripes if they did not observe the restraints laid down for them. "They were, however, admitted to the synagogue, where a place was railed off for them, ten handbreadths high and four cubits wide, on condition of their entering the house of worship before the rest of the congregation and leaving it after them" (Edersheim, 'Temple Service'). The exclusion of the leper was not for the purpose of avoiding contagion, nor to serve as a penalty for having contracted so loathsome a disease, but primarily to prevent the spread of ceremonial uncleanness communicated by his touch, and typically and mystically to teach that the fate brought upon a man by unremoved sin is separation from the people of God here and hereafter.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR