Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Garment and the Leather
Leviticus 13:47-59
47 “The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it is a woolen garment, or a linen garment; · WEB
The same procedure is applied to cloth, with the same waiting periods, and a garment that can be saved is washed rather than burned.
The chapter closes by extending the procedure to fabric — wool, linen, warp, weft, and anything made of leather Leviticus 13:47–48.
What is being described is spreading mold or rot, and the treatment mirrors the treatment of a person exactly. The garment is shown to the priest, shut up seven days Leviticus 13:50, examined again, and judged by whether the mark has spread.
That parallel is the point of including the section. The same category, the same waiting, the same examination, and the same vocabulary are applied to a coat as to a man — which tells a reader something about what the word translated leprosy is doing in this book. It is not a medical diagnosis. It is a designation for a spreading corruption in a surface, whether that surface is skin, cloth or, in the next chapter, a wall.
The outcomes are graded, and the grading is generous. If the mark has spread, the garment is burned Leviticus 13:52. If it has not, the article is washed and shut up another seven days Leviticus 13:54. If after washing the mark has faded but not gone, only the affected part is torn out Leviticus 13:56.
A garment is destroyed only when nothing else will do. Washing is tried, partial removal is tried, and a second quarantine is imposed before anyone reaches for the fire — and in a household where clothing was made by hand and owned in small numbers, that patience had real value.
The closing verse states what the whole chapter has been: a law to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean Leviticus 13:59.
Two verdicts, and the book has spent fifty-nine verses making sure the right one is reached. For all the severity of the sentence on a person put outside the camp, the machinery around that sentence is designed to slow it down.
settled What this mark means