Polyglot Bible: Leviticus: Leviticus 13

This is a passage from Leviticus 13 in the King James Bible, part of the Hebrew legal/ritual code known as the Priestly source, belonging to the genre of ancient Near Eastern cultic law. The text sets out detailed diagnostic protocols for skin diseases — rendered as "leprosy" but likely encompassing a range of conditions including vitiligo, ringworm, and burn scars — with the priest serving as the designated medical-religious examiner. The central procedural logic is a multi-stage inspection system: ambiguous cases require the affected person to be quarantined for seven-day intervals and re-examined, while clear cases (either definitively diseased or definitively clean) receive an immediate ruling. A counterintuitive claim appears in verses 12-13: if a disease has spread to cover the entire body uniformly white, the person is declared *clean*, whereas the appearance of raw flesh makes them unclean — suggesting the diagnostic concern is active, spreading infection rather than mere discoloration. The chapter extends these same inspection rules beyond human skin to contamination in textiles (wool, linen, leather), treating greenish or reddish mold-like growth in garments as a parallel ritual threat requiring quarantine, washing, and potential burning. The passage is distinctive for subordinating what looks like medical observation entirely to a priestly-ritual framework, where the priest's pronouncement — not the disease itself — determines social status and exclusion from the community camp.

Polyglot Bible: Leviticus: Leviticus 13

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