Leper Messiah cures the toxic mold of the soul (Leviticus 14; Isaiah 53)

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The Torah reading מְּצֹרָע Metzora (“leper,” Leviticus 14–15) is not primarily a discourse on public health, although the “in your face” about physical processes both normal and abnormal for men and can be distasteful. As we explored in the previous reading, תזריע Tazria, there is a level of understanding beneath the physical, with spiritual applications we can apply to our lives today. 

Here’s a list of the most important vocabulary words for Vayiqra generally and Tazria–Metzora specifically:

• offering, gift = קָרְבָּן qorban (H7133a) = what approaches (the Presence)
• holy = קֹדֶשׁ qodesh (H6944) = set apart for…
• clean = טָהוֹר tahor (H2889) = fit to approach the Presence
• unclean = טָמֵא tamé/tamei (H2931) = unfit to approach the Presence, not necessarily because of unworthiness
• leprosy = צָרַעַת tzaraʿat (H6883)
• the leper = הַמְּצֹרָע ha-metzorah (H6879)

Vayiqra (book of Leviticus) was written primarily for the priesthood, so they could understand how to perform their duties. The Levites and priests were called upon not only to maintain the Tabernacle services, but they were also called up on to teach nation as a whole how to “walk” in the Torah (i.e., live by it). 

צָרַעַת Tzaraʿat does not resemble Hansen’s disease — the skin ailment that we now call leprosy — or any other modern chronic skin disease, for that matter. This physical manifestation of a spiritual issue is evident in the instructions for diagnosing and battling a breakout in a house, garment or other household item and quarantining those who came in contact with it (Lev. 14:33–57).

This shows us that the mark of the metzora was more an issue of public moral health than public physical health. When a society is morally sick, that is just as much of a public health catastrophe as a pandemic of disease. 

Think about what has resulted in the aftermath of the pandemic quarantines and shelter-in-place orders, when our entire society got disconnected from their normal day-to-day routine. What happened to our children and teens, who were commanded by rule of law to avoid congregating in school with their teachers and peers? There is now a mental health crisis with our children and teens, including an increase in child and teenage suicides and drug abuse. 

People have also experienced an increase in stress, which is mostly mental in nature. Mental stress often causes a lot of physical damage to the body. 

The apostle Paul warned in 1Corinthians 11:17-33 that some of them had become physically sick because they did not treat the commemoration of the Passover with proper reverence — a spiritual problem. It seems like a complete non sequitur there, because Paul was chastising them for not treating the Passover with the sanctity of a memorial and that caused some of the Corinthians to experience a moral, a mental break, and that was manifesting itself physically.  

Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) warned that on the Day of the LORD, people will “faint from fear” (Luke 21:25–27). They will experience physical symptoms that originate from mental stress — fear of the turmoil caused by the return of the Son of God.

Toxic mold of the soul

The metzora of the houses is not about treating for “toxic mold.” It is more about the spiritual condition of the house — and the people who live there — than the physical condition. The outward physical symptoms are a manifestation of the spiritual condition of the person or the household. 

The lesson of tzaraʿat takes us back to the Garden of Eden and its two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad (Gen. 2:9, 17). But the New Jerusalem will only have one tree, the Tree of Life (Rev. 22:1–2).

We will no longer have any desire to seek the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. We will have gained the painful understanding that its fruits don’t bring wisdom in using its knowledge. Rather, that information has brought separation from God, the Life-giver, leading to disease, death, confusion, depression, malice and wickedness. By contrast, the Tree of Life is about the Giver and Source of life, the Creator. 

The metzora of human and house is “icky from the inside out.” And if it can be cleaned, it is redeemed. But if it can’t be cleaned, it is evicted from the community. 

The Holy Spirit fellowships with mankind (1Cor. 3:16; 6:19), even though there is no physical Temple/Tabernacle among us at this time in history. 

The reason the Messiah tells us that in the Messianic age, there will be no marriage or giving in marriage is that we will not have the kind of physical bodies that will go through cycles of “clean” and “unclean,” such as the women’s monthly menstrual cycle or the man’s periodic seminal emissions. Our bodies will be clean.

Hair of the metzora and the nazir

What is the deal with the shaving of hair in the metzora cleansing? Hair is an important part of the nazarite vows, as well as the process of dealing with women captured in war. 

For the nazarite, it was a remembrance of what was during the vow. For those women, it was a forced forgetting of their previous life. The nazirite’s hair was a sign of God’s blessing, like the offerings of first fruits and tithes from crops. We are blessed with what grows.

We see specific offerings mentioned in the Bible, but what about someone who wants to dedicate themselves for something toward the Kingdom? What God desires is a repentant and contrite heart (Psa. 51:17; Isa. 57:15). When one looks at the nazarite, we see a person who wants to be dedicated in service to God.

So the lesson for believers today and in any age is if you promise you are going to do something, do it. That’s why Messiah says let your “yes” be yes and “no” be no. We don’t need to make elaborate vows or oaths in God’s name to perform a service to God. But we should be just as specific and earnest in our service to God as the instructions are in Leviticus 1–6 regarding the qarbanot (offerings). 

There are those who would bring qarbanot with their entire heart and those who only brought qarbanot for selfish reasons, treating fellowship with God like a transaction rather than a relationship. 

Bow to Leper Messiah (Isaiah 52:13–53:12

The cleansing of a metzora was an eight-day process. We see several accounts of Yeshua cleansing them in the New Testament (Mark 1:40-44; Matt. 8:2-4; Luke 5:12-14; Luke 17:11–19). He instructed those healed to present themselves to the priests to finish the process prescribed by Torah regarding the restoration of the healed metzora.

There was an ancient expectation that Messiah would be like the suffering servant of the LORD described in Isaiah 52–53. And the start of this foretelling of the servant notes that this suffering will bring wisdom and understanding.

See, my servant shall understand, and he shall be exalted and glorified exceedingly.

 Just as many shall be astonished at you — so shall your appearance be without glory from men, and your glory be absent from the men —

Isaiah 52:13–14 New English Translation of the Septuagint

The Gospels record that Yeshua grew in favor and wisdom with God and men (Luke 2:40). His wisdom and intelligence astonished the elders of Israel from when He was 12 years old. His teachings astonished those who heard Him. 

3 Jewish views of the ‘Suffering Servant’ prophecy

Some Jews understand the suffering servant in Isaiah 52–53 to refer to all the people of Israel, all the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, while others see that the servant described is quite something else and actually redeems Israel. 

Here’s a modern liberal Jewish view of Isaiah 53:4–6:

“Either the servant suffered on behalf of the speakers (i.e., the guilty were not punished at all), or he suffered along with the guilty, even though he himself did not share in the guilt of his fellow Israelites. The former idea (i.e., the notion of vicarious suffering) would be unusual for the Bible; the latter idea (the idea of corporate guilt) is not.”

Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane, eds., The Jewish Study Bible,(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), paragraph 5931.

This commentary acknowledges that this passage could be read a couple of different ways, and that the vicariously suffering servant view “would be unusual for the Bible.” While it’s a laudable hermeneutic to be cautious of an interpretation that has little in the way of “second witnesses” in Scripture, such a view can also deflect one from something extraordinary that Heaven is doing.

There’s also another view that comes to us from the late medieval period, from an oft-cited Karaite Jewish polemic: 

The words, “Behold my servant shall prosper,” to the end of the 53rd chapter, concern the people of Israel, who are still bearing the yoke of this captivity, and are termed my servant in the singular number, which expression is used in many other places…. It may be alleged, that it has never been known at any period that the people of Israel have borne the sicknesses, the pains, and the wounds due to the iniquity of other nations; and whatever afflictions and troubles Israel have endured, came upon them on account of their own sins, and not for those of other nation. In our reply to this objection, we will show, first, that the prophets frequently designate humiliations and adversities by the name of sickness and wounds. … [I]t appears, that Scripture designates the captivity as attended with calamities, and describes the troubles that took place during the exile under the names of bruises and wounds—but redemption, enlargement, and deliverance, Scripture depicts by the terms of curing and healing.

(Isaac ben Abraham Troki (1553–1594), Khizzuq Emunah (Faith Strengthened), Part 1, Chapter 22 (1681), translation by Worldwide Karaite Movement.

As ben Troki noted, the prophets referred to the exiles and the sufferings in exile as affliction, like upon a body. And when the exiles were redeemed and returned to their Land, the return is described as healing. But the passage in question is about redeeming Israel by way of the suffering of this servant, not by way of the suffering of Israel.

Now here’s a view from the Babylonian Talmud, compiled in the 4th century A.D.:

Rabbis said, “His [Messiah’s] name is ‘the leper of the school house,’ as it is written, ‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted’ [Isa. 53:4].”

Jacob Neusner, ed., The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary,(Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005), 98B (b.Sanhedrin 98B/1.108:I)

Why did these commentators refer to a metzora in this verse? Let’s look at translations of key Hebrew and Greek words in Isaiah 53:4. 

Surely our griefs [חֳלִי kholi, “sickness,” H2483] He Himself bore, And our sorrows [מַכְאוֹב makhov, “pain,” H4341] He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken [נָגַע naga, “touch, reach, strike,” H5060], smitten [נָכָה nakhah, “beat down,” H5221] of God, and afflicted [עָנָה ’anah, “be bowed down” i.e. “humbled,” H6031].

Isaiah 53:4 NASB

This one bears our sins [ἁμαρτία hamartia, “failure,” G266] and suffers pain [ὀδυνάω odunaō, “anguish,” G3600] for us, and we accounted him to be in trouble [πόνος pónos, “toil, pain,” G4192; from πονηρός ponērós, “wicked,” G4d190] and calamity [πληγή plēgḗ, “stroke, stripe, blow, wound,” G4127] and ill–treatment [κάκωσις kákōsis, “oppression,” G2561].

Isaiah 53:4 NETS

This is a beautiful portrait of the Servant of the Lord. Do we feel the same anguish over our own sins, transgressions and iniquities as the Messiah feels as He bears them for us? We certainly would not want God to “touch” (i.e., plague) us with suffering, yet the Messiah took all that suffering voluntarily. 

Tongue got your tzaraʿat?

As we studied in Tazria, the most common reason in the Bible that a person was afflicted with the metzora was לשון הרע lashon ha-ra (“evil tongue”). It ranges from gossip to careless tale-bearing to slander to malicious false testimony.  

When someone tells us something defamatory about someone else, we need to carefully examine why we feel the urge to pass on that information to someone else. What is our motive in telling someone else this information that has come to us? If you wouldn’t say it to their face, your motives for saying it behind their back are very suspect. To say something behind someone’s back means they don’t have the opportunity to defend themselves or clarify the subject. The purpose of such talk is to tear someone down, not build them up. 

What is lashon hara? Here’s a compilation of characteristics from the late 19th century Jewish work Chofetz Chaim (“Seeker of Life”):

• Lashon Hara is derogatory information:
  • Describes a person’s negative characteristics.
  • Spreads potentially harmful information.
  • Embarrasses the person discussed.
  • Garners ill-will against the subject.
• What isn’t lashon hara:
  • Helping the person in question.
  • Discussing with a trustworthy person — not a tale-bearer — whether correction is needed and how to do it.
  • Helping a victim or preventing victimization.
  • Resolving a major dispute: peacemaking.

One of the most subtle forms of lashon hara is the surreptitious prayer request. After saying a bunch of slanderous things behind someone’s back, ending the commentary with “we need to pray about this” can be a fig leaf covering a lot of backbiting and gossip. I have seen it happen way too often where someone will unload a pile of steaming gossip for the entertainment and judgment of others and they end it with a comment such as “we really need to pray about that” after they’ve just destroyed someone’s reputation. This is not piety, this is lashon hara. That is not someone that is known to keep confidences. So that’s something that we have to really guard against ourselves. 

On the other hand, if you are speaking to someone who is a real prayer warrior, who has a real heart for prayer and you know they will only speak to the Lord about the issue, and not spread it around to other people for entertainment, this is not lashon hara. 

The Messiah bore our sicknesses, anguish and our pain. The Messiah has a dual role of bearing our “plagues” (Passover) as well as taking them away (Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement).

The next day [Yokhanan the baptizer] saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

John 1:29 NASB

What is the Messiah taking away? Our sicknesses, the sins that should cause us anguish fell upon this Servant of the Lord. The leper Messiah that took away what was supposed to be our affliction.

Since He did this for us, we should bear one another’s pain, to help and encourage people to walk towards righteousness and holiness. 

So that’s why you see this incredible connection in the Bible between metzora — something that’s far more than skin deep — and gossip and slander. Those behaviors actually destroy people from the inside out. 

Summary: Tammy