and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body. And if the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of leprous disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.
I. Concerning the plague of leprosy we may observe in general, 1. That it was rather an uncleanness than a disease; or, at least, so the law considered it, and therefore employed not the physicians but the priests about it. Christ is said to cleanse lepers, not to cure them.
Commenting on Leviticus 13:1-17
And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh,.... Whether it be a swelling, scab, or a bright spot that appears, and judge of it by the following rules, and none but a priest might do this: and when the hair in the plague is turned white; it arising in a place where hair grows, and which hair is not...
the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh, &c.--The leprosy, as covering the person with a white, scaly scurf, has always been accounted an offensive blemish rather than a serious malady in the East, unless when it assumed its less common and malignant forms.