Tag: tsara’ah – leprosy – Strong’s H6883

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Discussions Prophets and Writings Torah

Good character is more than skin deep (Leviticus 13)

Good character is more than skin deep (Leviticus 13)

Some people studying the Torah portion תזריע Tazria (“she will conceive,” Leviticus 12–13) enjoy picking apart the descriptions of the צָרַעַת Tzaraat, commonly translated as “leprosy,” to see how they similar to or different from skin ailments that are known in our modern age.

But such speculations distract us from the most important lesson of Tzaraat: It was primarily a spiritual disease, not a physical ailment. God used it to correct those with לשון הרע lashon ha-ra the “evil tongue”: gossips and slanderers. Those actions came either temporarily, as He did to Miriam, the sister of Moses, or as a life sentence as he did to King Uzziah and Gehazi, the servant of Elisha.

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Discussions Torah

How the Messiah breathes life into ‘the walking dead’ (Leviticus 12–15)

Birth and “the walking dead,” aka lepers. The two couldn’t be more different. The first brings life into the world, and the latter is a mark of life that is headed out of the world. Yet in human body’s sometimes gross processes of fostering the new, we see similarities with the indeed gross processes that unravel the body, making it waste away.

The Torah readings תזריע Tazria (“she will conceive,” Leviticus 12–13) and מְּצֹרָע Metzora (“leper,” Leviticus 14–15) weave a thread of Heaven’s wisdom between the realms of life and death, showing us in stark imagery how Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) indeed is making this happen: “The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (1Corinthians 15:26–27 NASB).

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Discussions Torah

Leviticus 14-15: Don’t tell God what He can and can’t do. Just don’t.

How did God deal with those who slander Him personally? Can such a person receive a pardon? The Torah defines the unpardonable sin as speaking evil against God. How does one speak evil against God? When one says that there is something that God doesn’t have the strength and power to do, that is speaking […]

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Discussions Torah

Leviticus 12-13 and Passover: God of the newly living, Healer of the ‘walking dead’

It seems bizarre that the Bible packages instructions for purifying new bothers and newborns together with what look like public health instructions for dealing with chronic skin diseases and toxic mold. And this passage in Leviticus 12–15 (Torah readings Tazria and Metzorah) comes between a big failing of the priesthood (deadly use of “strange fire” in Leviticus 10) and Yom haKippurim (Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16). Discover the important messages that come from these passages, unwrapped as a packaged set. Why are the instructions for purify childbirth packaged together with those for cleansing the “walking dead?” Why does the miracle of birth require a sin offering? What is it about baby girls that doubles the exclusionary period from the Tabernacle? Why is there an elaborate ritual for the cleansed leper? How is the rebirth of the leper similar to the resurrection of Israel from the house of bondage?So we can start to see links to Pesach (Passover) and the forethought, continued caring and compassion of God and the one and only Son of God, the Lamb of God.

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Discussions Torah

Numbers 4:21–7:89: Ambassadors for the gospel

Emblem at the Embassy (residence) of Israel in Prague, Czech Republic, 2007. Photo by Krokodyl, posted on https://commons.wikimedia.org/

In the Torah reading נשא Nasso (“take up” or “carry,” i.e., conduct), we witness a type of “harvest,” not of grapes or wheat but of people. The LORD’s Tabernacle is the embassy set up to receive them, and the priests and ultimately the people are the ambassadors sent out to proclaim His message.

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Discussions Torah

Leviticus 12–15: Dishing and spreading the dirt is easy; preventing its spread is hard

A closeup view of Mycobacterium leprae bacteria inside human body. The bacteria causes Hansen's disease, aka leprosy. (COMPOSITE OF FREEIMAGES.COM/ANDRZEJ POBIEDZIŃSKI & RDMAG.COM/AP)

What does childbirth have to do with leprosy? Why do new mothers and babies need sin offerings? How is leprosy connected to gossip and slander? In this study of Leviticus 12–15, we will be taking a step up and a step back the topics discussed. Some of it is unsettling, and it is easy to lose ourselves in some of the more distasteful details, while forgetting the important life lessons the Holy One of Yisra’el is communicating to us.

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Discussions Torah

Numbers 4:21–7:89: God purifies all who come near

Painting by Jan August Hendrik Leys, "Vow" in 1860, currently residing in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The accounts recorded in the Torah reading נשא Nasso (Numbers 4:21-7:89), whether it’s about removing the lepers and those exposed to death from the circumference of the God’s House, dealing with a husband’s jealousy husband, or dedicating the Tabernacle, it’s all about how the people who are near God are to be pure, holy and righteous. That purity only is possible by the work of our “great High Priest,” Yeshua the Mashiakh (Jesus the Christ).