When we read the instructions regarding leprosy, we are not only reading about a physical condition. We are reading about something that needed to be seen, examined, and subsequently addressed.

In Leviticus 14:1-3, we read of the beginning of the process by which the person who had leprosy would be purified:

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “This shall be the law of the person with leprosy on the day of his cleansing. Now he shall be brought to the priest; and the priest shall go out to a place outside of the camp. Then the priest shall look, and if the leprous infection has been healed in the person with leprosy.”

When we read about leprosy in the biblical text, it is not a disease in the way we understand it today. It functioned differently. It was often a sign through which God demonstrated His power.

For example, in Exodus 4:6-7, we read that leprosy was one of the signs that God gave to Moses. His hand became leprous and then was restored. We also see this with Miriam. After she spoke against Moses, we read in Numbers 12:10 that she was struck with leprosy. What appeared on the outside reflected what was happening beneath the surface. And that is where Leviticus 14:34 comes in:

When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as an inheritance, and I put a spot of leprosy on a house in the land of your possession,

This verse is not there by mistake. God is speaking about a people entering a land that was promised to them generations earlier. The land is something He is giving them. That, in itself, is a sign of His power.

At that time, they were entering the land for the first time as a people. Today, we are looking at something different. Not the beginning, but a return, a regathering. And yet, when you look at the reality of the people of Israel back in the land in our time, it is difficult to ignore just how miraculous it is. Because just as the land was given then, the return of the Jewish people in our time is not something that can simply be explained away as happenstance or accidental.

In closing, in Isaiah 66:18, we read:

For I know their works and their thoughts; the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see My glory.

God speaks about a day where the nations will see His glory, which I believe, will be revealed through Yeshua.

And then in Isaiah 66:19:

And I will set a sign among them, and will send survivors from them to the nations… to the distant coastlands that have neither heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare My glory among the nations.

Those who are sent go to places that have not seen, to declare His glory among the nations. The people of Israel still have a purpose that has yet to be fulfilled! God is not finished with Israel or the Jewish people. His calling is irrevocable. Blessed is the person who understands this and stands on this truth!

Shabbat Shalom,
Moran