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The name of this week’s Parasha is M’tzora, which means “lepers”, and it takes us from Leviticus 14:1-15:33. Adonai gave Moses instructions on the procedure for cleansing from leprosy in chapter 14. A person healed from leprosy must appear before the priest with two living clean birds and cedar wood, scarlet, yarn and hyssop. One of the birds is killed in a clay pot over running water, while the other bird is dipped with the cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop in the blood of the dead bird. The person is then sprinkled seven times by the priest, who pronounces them to be clean and releases the living bird go free.
The cleansed person must then wash themselves and their clothes in water and shave off all their hair. Although the person is allowed back in the camp, they must stay outside their own tent for seven more days. On the seventh day, they must shave off all their hair one more time, wash themselves and their clothes in water, and then they are clean.
On the eighth day, the healed person must bring a pair of year-old unblemished male lambs, a year-old unblemished female lamb, a grain offering of six quarts of flour mixed with oil, and one-third of a quart of oil. The priest is to take these items to the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) and offers one of the male lambs with the oil for a guilt offering, and waves them both as a wave offering.
What happens next is quite interesting: the priest is to kill the lamb in the place of the sanctuary and place some of its’ blood on the right ear lobe, the thumb of the right hand, and the big toe of the right foot of the healed person, symbolically covering the whole person. The symbolic covering of the entire person’s body displays the role that Adonai must have in a person’s life-submission to Adonai is required in everything a person thinks and does. After all, it’s with the ear that a man listens, and what he listens to affects how he thinks. The thumb is what enables a man to grasp things, and so this symbolizes his actions, and a man’s feet are what move him, and this reflects where he goes – what are his priorities. And so this is a picture of man’s need to yield every aspect of his life to the will of the Creator. The priest then places the oil on top of the blood, and pours the remaining oil on the person’s head. The priest sacrifices the animal and burns it together with a grain offering on the altar to make atonement for the healed person, who is now clean.
If the person is poor and can’t afford all these animals, they can bring one male lamb for a guilt offering to be waved, two-thirds of a pint of oil, a fifth of a quart of flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and two doves or pigeons. The same procedure is then followed for sacrificing the lamb, but one of the pigeons or doves is sacrificed as a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, along with a grain offering.
Adonai then gave Moses and Aaron instructions on removing leprosy from houses. When the priest is notified of these conditions, he has everything removed from inside the house before inspecting the house. If there are greenish or reddish spots that are more than surface deep, he closes the house for seven days. If the priest sees that the leprosy has spread, he orders that the leprous stones are removed and the leprosy must be scraped away.
If the leprosy comes back, the priest orders the house to be torn down and destroyed, and the pieces of the house removed to an unclean place outside the city. Anyone who enters the house is unclean until evening. If the leprosy has left after the house is repaired, the priest pronounces the house to be clean, and takes two small birds with cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop to perform the same cleansing procedure on the house as was performed on the person healed from leprosy.
In chapter 15, Adonai gave Moses and Aaron instructions for the Jewish people to become clean after bodily discharges. Anyone or anything touched by the unclean person is unclean. The person with the discharge must wait seven days after cleaning themselves before washing again to be clean. On the eighth day, the person is to bring two doves or pigeons to the priest, who sacrifices one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering, and makes atonement for the person with the discharge.
In looking back at this passage, while these instructions may seem tedious, they help us see the importance God places on cleanliness and holiness. These standards were put into place by a holy God for a holy people to keep themselves clean, and to provide restoration for those healed from these conditions. Yeshua emphasized the importance of following these standards to the man He healed from leprosy in Matthew chapter 8.
In the Haftarah portion to M’tzora, which is 2 Kings 7, we see four lepers isolated from the Jewish community of Samaria due to these prohibitions. Yet because the lepers were outcasts from the city, they were the ones who discovered that the Arameans had utterly abandoned their camp and possessions, and alerted the Jewish people in the city. By God’s grace, the Aramean siege against Samaria was broken. This is a foreshadowing of the Gospel – those who are rejected and scorned by their own community are the very ones who bring the Good News. God delights to use those who are regarded as lowly, weak and foolish to bring the message of hope that salvation is found only in Yeshua!
There is another way that parasha M’tzora is relevant to us today. Sin is like spiritual leprosy. All of humanity, each and every one of us, are spiritual lepers. We are spiritually unhealthy, spiritually sick, and spiritually unclean.
Like those with leprosy, Yeshua was isolated outside the camp when He died for our sins, so that we can be healed of our spiritual leprosy! His death is like the sacrifices used to cleanse lepers and cleanse those who were unclean.
Let’s avail ourselves of the atonement and cleansing God has proved through the Messiah. After that happens, let’s do our best to not re-infect ourselves by doing the very things that made us spiritually unhealthy in the first place.
And let’s tell the other spiritual lepers that the Messiah can heal them and cleanse them and restore them and give them a new, healthy life. Amen?