Commentaria in Leviticum
46. He shall dwell alone outside the camp—in the desert, and outside the cities in Juda; understand, unless he be a very eminent person. For Ozias, struck with leprosy, was permitted, as being a king, to dwell apart in a free house, 4 Kings xv, 5: for this house of his was wholly separated from the people, as is said in 2 Paralipomenon 26:21. Hence it was the same as if he had dwelt outside the city. Although St. Chrysostom, in his homily 4 and Sentences, homily 9, on Isaias 6, teaches that the Jews sinned in that, out of regard for the royal dignity, they did not expel King Ozias far outside the city; and that therefore God withdrew prophecy and prophets from them until the death of Ozias; for then Isaias began to prophesy: for in the year that King Ozias died, Isaias saw that illustrious vision which he describes in chapter vi, as is plain there at verse 1. But of this matter we must speak on Isaias.
Hence it is plain that what Manetho and other historians of the Gentiles write, on the testimony of Josephus, book III of the Antiquities and book VII of the Jewish War, is false: that the Hebrews were a rabble of scabby and leprous people, whom Moses accordingly led, driven out of Egypt, into Chanaan, forbidding them to have dealings with strangers, lest for the same reason they should become hateful to the Chananeans. For if they had themselves been only a rabble of lepers, how would God have commanded them to separate lepers from their company?
God willed that lepers should live outside the camp, both that they might not infect others, and that in this solitude, forsaken by all, they might learn to have recourse to God and say to him: “To thee is the poor man left; thou wilt be a helper to the orphan.” That holy abbot learned this in the desert, who, as we read in the Lives of the Fathers, when he had been a leper sixty years, and money was brought him by someone to support himself, refused it, saying: “Dost thou come after sixty years to take away my nourisher? Behold, in so long a time of my infirmity I have wanted for nothing, God giving to me and feeding me.” And hence, perhaps, it has come about that lepers, even if they are rich, live not on bread of their own but on begged bread, and are then less tormented by their leprosy (if what they themselves assert is true). For begged bread is the bread of God and of the angels (as St. Francis says), who urge the almsgivers to give it and the poor to ask for it.
Tropologically, Radulphus: The body of lepers is laid bare when their iniquity is revealed; the head is uncovered when the origin and root of their perversity is set forth; they cry out that they are defiled, if not by their own confession, being obstinate, at least by the confession of their works; their mouths are shut, while from all who detest their conversation the power of administering poison is taken away. These things apply to all sins, but most of all to heresy. For were not one Luther, one Calvin, because he was not separated, infected many kingdoms with the evil of leprosy and heresy? So the fornicator, so the drunkard, communicates his leprosy and vice to those with whom he lives. “He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled with it; and he that hath fellowship with the proud shall put on pride,” says Ecclesiasticus, chapter xiii; and: “He that walketh with the wise shall be wise; a friend of fools shall become like to them.” Hear the notable counsel of Seneca, epistle 104: “If you wish,” he says, “to be rid of vices, you must withdraw far from the examples of vices.” Likewise: “Swelling pride will cling to you as long as you converse with the proud; avarice will cling as long as you live with the avaricious; the company of adulterers will inflame your lusts. Live with the Catos, converse with Socrates, with Zeno.”
Verse 47. 47. A garment of wool or of linen that hath leprosy. This is the seventh species of leprosy, but an analogous one, namely the leprosy of a garment or house, of which in the following chapter, verse 35. You will ask what this leprosy was, and whence it arose? Valesius answers that leprosy is a contagious disease, no less than the plague; as we see, therefore, that the seeds of the plague are wont to cling to garments, bedchambers, houses, cups and dishes (for through all these infection happens), so it is clear that leprosy also can cling to a garment and a house, and that a house and a garment can be leprous, as they can be pestilential. Again, as a house or garment becomes pestilential, so it becomes leprous in one of two ways. First, from the infection and corruption of the air; for as garments contract moths from the air where they lie neglected and are not aired, so do they contract plague and leprosy. In like manner we see garments, wood and walls rot when the south wind blows, but be freed from rot when the north wind blows; and for that reason women are wont to hang out garments and spread them in a north wind, that they may be kept uncorrupted. Secondly, from the touch or contagion of a leper; but all contagion happens either by the breath, or by the exhalation and evaporation of putrid vapours, which comes through the pores of the whole body, especially through sweat. So we see a mirror infected with a bloody colour by a menstruating woman, because certain spirits go out from her eyes, and with them thin bloody humours, which condense on the mirror so that a bloody colour appears in it.
In these ways, then, lepers can infect garments and houses, and breathe leprosy upon them. Hence it will be expedient for them to change both garments and houses, and to live in pure and open air; for though living things differ in nature and temperament from inanimate ones, yet because of the common nature by which both are liable to putrefaction, they can communicate and impart to one another putrefactions not altogether alike, but analogous, for example certain corrosive or putrefying qualities, which eat away and corrupt a garment and a house as they do a man.
Wherefore, to heal all the faults of the skin the best remedy, says Valesius, is to use new garments, very clean or frequently washed, so much so that cleanliness of garments alone is often enough for a cure; hence in the following chapter repeated washing of the garments is prescribed in the purification of the leper, verses 8 and 9. Just as, on the contrary, those who wear garments already soiled and rotting are seldom free from scab, itch and lice; for as a garment can receive infection from the skin, so the skin can from the garment, and each rots by itself, and when both are foul they putrefy one another.
Finally, in woollen or leather garments there is a peculiar cause, on account of the diseases of the animals from which the wool or skins were taken; for it is well known that garments of the wool of dead animals breed lice; in like manner they produce other infections of diseases.
Secondly, others, better, with Theodoret, Question XVII, think otherwise of this leprosy: namely, that God, when the Jews sinned, used to inflict this leprosy upon their garments or houses, that through it he might recall the owners to soundness of mind; and so that this leprosy was not so much natural as a plague sent by God. This leprosy, then, seems to have been a moth, or some corrosive or corruptive and creeping quality (such as is found in salt, nitre, vitriol, which eat away and pierce garments, and tin, and iron), inflicted by God on the garments and houses of the Jews either directly or through secondary causes, and therefore seems to have been almost peculiar to Judea and the Jews, and almost unknown to other nations. That this is so is proved, first, because we now know no leprosy in houses or garments; for houses and garments are not naturally wont to be infected with leprosy, and so are not capable of it. Secondly, because we find that the leprosy which is in a leper does not spread itself to his garments and house; otherwise all the garments of lepers would be infected, eaten away and rotted by leprosy, whereas we see the contrary. Thirdly, the plague does not inhere in a garment or house so as to destroy or consume it, as it destroys a man; it only clings to the garment and house, and makes it pestilential to man, so that a man draws from it the pestilential vapours that cling to it, and is infected by the plague and consumed. Likewise, then, leprosy does not inhere but only clings to a garment or house; it does not make it leprous, but can only breathe leprosy on a man; but formerly leprosy inhered in a house and garment and made it truly leprous: therefore in another way a house was then called pestilential, in another leprous; for it was called pestilential causally, but leprous formally. Fourthly, because in the following chapter, verse 34, the leprosy of houses is called a plague, namely one sent by God: for the Hebrew expressly signifies this there, which reads thus: if I (namely I, God) shall give the plague of leprosy. Finally, although we now experience decay in wood, lime and stones, yet we recognise in them no leprosy of the kind that also attacks, eats away and consumes new and solid stones, as this leprosy of the Jews did, as is plain from the following chapter, verse 44, where it is commanded that all the stones infected with leprosy be taken out of the house and new ones put in, and if these afterwards are found infected with leprosy, the house is commanded to be pulled down.