Commentaria in Leviticum
I say secondly: This leprosy of the Jews was unlike and other than our leprosy, which is rather elephantiasis than leprosy. Abulensis denies this and judges that our leprosy is the same with the leprosy of the Jews, but is now more corrosive than it was then. But that it was not the same is plain first, because, as I shall presently say, the leprosy of the Jews was almost only in the skin; but ours feeds upon flesh and bones. Secondly, the leprosy of the Jews also invaded garments and walls and houses, as is plain from verse 59; but there is now no leprosy which attacks garments or houses. Thirdly, our leprosy is incurable; but the leprosy of the Jews was curable, and often cured, as is plain from this chapter and the next. Nor should this seem wonderful: for so we often see that every region and every climate has its own qualities and affections, and so also its own diseases, nay one and the same disease in another climate is another, and has other symptoms. And this was the cause why in the time of the holy war so many Belgians, French, Germans returning from Judea came home leprous, and why so many leper-houses were erected everywhere, which still exist, but without lepers.
You will say thirdly: The leprosy of the Jews was like the old leprosy of the Greeks, of which Hippocrates says: “Scabies, and impetigines, and vitiligo, and alopecia arise from phlegm; they are, however, a disgrace rather than diseases.” The reason is: for the old leprosy of the Jews, as St. Augustine says, book 2 Questions on the Gospels, Question 40, was often a fault of colour rather than of health, or of the integrity of the senses and members, and for that cause lepers are said by Christ not to be healed but cleansed. Such was the leprosy of the Greeks, or common one: for, as John Mainardus, a distinguished physician, rightly proves from Galen, book 6 Epistles, leprosy is a slight fault of the skin, so like scabies that it can scarcely be distinguished from it. In like manner, says Cajetan, this leprosy of the Jews was a disease, or rather a fault residing in the skin more than in the flesh, and that manifold and various, and so scabies itself is here called leprosy, if it be graver and surpass the common and simple. Wherefore Francis Valesius, an illustrious physician, accurately examining this leprosy, book On Sacred Philosophy 19, judges that by this leprosy various faults of the skin and deformities of the external body are to be understood, of which one is born of another, and that from the redundance of phlegm or melancholy, by the various intensity or remission of either. Hence he thinks that in this chapter verses 6 and 39 vitiligo is described; verses 3 and 7, scabies with scales, which is called lichen or impetigo; verse 9, elephantiasis or its beginning; verse 29, achor; verse 38, alopecia or ophiasis, as I shall say more fully from him at the several verses.
I say fourthly, that leprosy here is not one disease, but various and manifold, differing not only in species but in genus, and so is extended analogically to the faults of garments and houses. For the leprosies which are described in this chapter are not so much diseases as deformities or certain putrefactions of the skin, and these various and manifold. Hence it is no wonder if they befit not only living things but also lifeless, especially where they are begotten by some common cause, and spread popularly: for the air, which alone can be the common cause of popular diseases, touches and surrounds lifeless things on every side as living, though it affects them in various ways. For there is a difference between the leprosy of man, ox, sheep and swine. Yet the leprosy of all is the same analogically; and all leprosies are mutually akin and neighbouring, so that contagion is mutual, and living things can rub leprosy upon lifeless. For this leprosy, as I said, is not so much a disease as a certain corrosion, corruption and putrescence; for all things can putrefy, except fire, but only living things can be sick: thus far Valesius, chapters 19 and 20.
To which, however, I think this should be added, that this leprosy of the Jews was not in all respects like the leprosy of the Greeks, which is commonly called leprosy by physicians, and resides in the skin; but rather was something intermediate between leprosy and elephantiasis, and vitiated not only the skin but also the breath, and consequently the interior parts; for this is why in verse 45 lepers are commanded to cover the mouth, lest by their foul breath they infect others. For though this law is ceremonial, yet it, like others, is founded in nature and this natural cause. Again, that it was often not so much natural, or arisen from natural causes, as specially inflicted by God on the Jews as a plague, and therefore that the physical and medical causes and symptoms of this leprosy cannot in all points now be assigned by physicians, I showed a little before, and shall show more fully at verse 47.
Verse 2. The man in whose skin and flesh shall arise a diverse colour, or a blister, or as it were something shining, that is, the stroke of leprosy—so also the Chaldee. But in the Hebrew the order is different; for it has: when there shall be a swelling or blister, or a spot adhering to the flesh (which our version renders “a diverse colour”), or something whitish, so that it be in his flesh for a stroke of leprosy, that is, that it seem to be leprosy, or give rise to the suspicion of leprosy. The Septuagint render, a scar of significance, or shining. Of significance, that is, signifying that it is leprosy. So Hesychius. Note: shining, namely so that they seem to be as it were glittering bran or scales; for these can be the beginnings of a fault passing into the malignant, and into some kind of leprosy, says Valesius.
He shall be brought to Aaron the priest.—Because it belongs to the priest to judge whether anyone be fit, that is clean, so that it be lawful for him to enter the sanctuary or not, and consequently it is his to judge of leprosy, whether it be and of what kind. Secondly, because the priests of old judging between leprosy and leprosy were a type of the priests of the new law, to whom has been communicated by Christ the power of binding and loosing sinners.
So St. Jerome on Matthew, chapter 16, and Chrysostom, book 3 On the Priesthood.
Verse 3. And if he see the leprosy in the skin, and the hair turned white.—For the whiteness of the hairs argues the corruption and fault of the flesh from which they grow. “For leprosy,” says St. Cyril, book 15 On Adoration, fol. 309, “arises from the flesh dying: for the ulcer is hollowed at once, the skin being consumed, and ever creeping into the depth; whence it comes about that the hair which grows in those parts, languishing, turns white, and like a stem together with the soil beneath is corrupted.”
This is that first species of leprosy which by physicians, says Valesius above, is called lichen, or impetigo, or flying leprosy, because it creeps and as it were flies through the parts; by the Arabs it is called barras, or albarras, white, and is begotten of salt phlegm or melancholy. Two signs of it are given here: first, that the hairs which grow from the leprous skin are changed into a white colour; second, that the leprosy itself is lower than the rest of the skin, of which Valesius gives this cause: “For since those malignant lichens,” he says, “are born of salt phlegm, either alone or mixed with black bile, it must be, where the temperament of the part has been much shaken, and as it were changed into the nature of the excrement itself, that the skin is exceedingly salted, and therefore dry and contracted, and lower than the rest of the skin, which is sound.” Again: “Since things arising agree with those from which they arise, when the skin by reason of the phlegm shall have been made so white that it has changed the very mode of its substance into a whiter, it will also render white the hairs growing out of it.”
And the very appearance of the leprosy.—The Hebrew is the aspect of the stroke, that is, the appearing species of leprosy. See Canon 30.
Lower.—For leprosy eats away both the skin and the flesh.
And at his judgment he shall be separated.—The Hebrew is, and the priest shall look upon him, and shall judge him polluted; and consequently to be separated and sent out beyond the camp. Marks are described in this chapter by which it can be discerned who are infected with grave leprosy, who with light; who can easily be cured, who are incurable: that those found to suffer only simple scab, being judged clean, might be dismissed; those whom there was hope would be cleansed, might be shut up; but those who seemed of desperate cleansing should be wholly separated, and cast out beyond the camp.
Verse 4. But if there be a shining whiteness in the skin.—“Whiteness,” says St. Cyril, book 15, “is an infirmity of the flesh (or rather of the skin) most like to leprosy, save that that evil does not act into the depth, but sprouts at the top of the body, nor changes the hair into a white colour; nor is it diffused so widely as to be unable to be checked, but is cured with light remedies.”
Verse 5. He shall shut him up seven other days.—God here commands that the leper be shut up a second time for a week; which being over, if the leprosy be somewhat obscure, and has not grown in the skin by creeping deeper or wider, that is, if the spots have not spread, and the signs of leprosy have become more obscure, so that the whiteness which moved the suspicion of leprosy has now been changed into blackness, or has ceased to be bright; He commands that it be known that it is not true leprosy, but psora or scab, and the man dismissed, his garments washed. For he is clean, that is, he is not a leper, but only scabby; which is slight, and he will be freed from it by the use of the cleanest garments, linen and woollen, and by a good diet, some evacuation of the body having been first made, if need be. So Valesius.