House Leprosy

In Leviticus 14:33-57, we learn of house leprosy. This condition called leprosy is not to be thought of as what we would call leprosy today. In the bible the condition, when applied to people, meant that a white spot had appeared on the skin, and in regards to a house, reddish and greenish spots had appeared on the walls.

The instructions for what the priest had to do were these:

1) Remove everything from the house and quarantine the house for seven days. Then, on the seventh day the priest would come back to inspect the house.

2) If the leprosy was still there and had spread, the priest would order all the infected stones to be removed and all the plaster to be scraped off the walls, and all of that to be taken outside of the city. Then new stones would be put in place of the old and the whole house re-plastered.

3) If the infection returned, the priest would order for the house to be torn down completely and taken out of the city to an unclean place.

This is exactly what Jesus did with the temple.

1) In John 2:13-25 Jesus visited the temple in His early ministry. He turned over the tables and said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” He inspected the house and found leprosy.

2) Near the end of Jesus’s ministry He came back for a second inspection. Again, Jesus drove out those who were selling and cleansed the temple. He said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den.”

3) In AD 70 Jesus came back again, found the infection still remained, and destroyed the temple.

Today the Church is the temple of God, and Jesus is continuously separating the sheep from the goats, continuously inspecting His Church, blessing the faithful and purging the wicked.