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Bible Dictionaries
Leper
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Leper. Leprosy is the name of a loathsome disease taking various forms; some curable, some not. In the worst form the bones and the marrow are pervaded with the disease, so that the joints of the hands and feet lose their power, the limbs of the body fall together, and the whole system assumes a most deformed and loathsome appearance. The progress and effect of the disease are described in Job 2:7-8; Job 2:12; Job 6:2; Job 7:3-5; Job 19:14-21. There are two forms of the disease—the tuberculated, incrusting the whole person with ulcerous tubercles, and the anæsthetic, making the skin mummylike—but under both forms "Death lives," and the diseased is a walking tomb, a parable of death. There was also a milder form of the disease, the so-called white leprosy, often attacking only one limb and generally curable, as when "Moses' hand was leprous as snow." Exodus 4:6. Notice also the cases of Miriam, Numbers 12:10; Gehazi, 2 Kings 5:27; and Uzziah, 2 Chronicles 26:16-23. Although the laws respecting this disease which we find in the Mosaic code are exceedingly rigid, it is by no means clear that the leprosy was considered contagious. The horror and disgust which was felt toward a disease so foul and loathsome might be a sufficient reason for such severe enactments, and strict seclusion was at all events an effective means of arresting the progress of the disease by preventing intermarriage between "lepers" ana the healthy. The leper was excluded from the tabernacle and the camp, and when he was healed his restoration to social intercourse with his fellow-men was twofold; performed both in the camp and in the tabernacle. Leviticus 14:3-32. A house for lepers.was built outside Jerusalem on the hill of Jareb—i.e., "the hill of scraping," Jeremiah 31:40; Job 2:8—and the leper was compelled to wear mourning. Leviticus 13:45. Of leprosy in garments and houses, Leviticus 13:47-59; Leviticus 14:33-53, little can be said. It might he propagated by animalculæ or germs; and the regulations concerning it must have been of a sanitary as well as moral character. It is well known that the disease is now frequently conveyed by clothes.
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Leper'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/l/leper.html. 1893.
