Bible Strands
Leviticus 14:3
The priest is to go outside the camp to examine him, and if the skin disease of the afflicted person has healed,
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The text records a divine instruction directed to the priest regarding the procedural timeline for a person recovering from a skin disease. The moment occurs on the designated day of cleansing, after the afflicted individual has been brought to the priest but before any purification rites commence.
The words — The Hebrew וְ/יָצָא (ve./ya.Tza') translates to "and he will go out," and וְ/רָאָה (ve./ra.'Ah) means "and he will see." These verbs dictate the priest's mandatory departure from the encampment and his subsequent visual inspection of the healed skin.
The thread — This outward movement mirrors the isolation command in Leviticus 13:46, where the infected person must remain outside the camp until declared clean. The diagnostic sequence also frames the ritual instructions in Leviticus 14:4, where the priest issues orders only after completing his external examination.
Why it lands — The text requires observable verification of physical healing before the priest can authorize communal reintegration. Readers must acknowledge that the ritual framework establishes external evidence as the necessary condition for restoring the afflicted person to the community.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;
Cross-references
- Leviticus 13:46 As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone in a place outside the camp.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
- Exodus 15:26 saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
- 2 Kings 5:3 She said to her mistress, “If only my master would go to the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.”
- 2 Kings 5:7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and asked, “Am I God, killing and giving life, that this man expects me to cure a leper? Surely you can see that he is seeking a quarrel with me!”
- 2 Kings 5:14 So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored and became like that of a little child, and he was clean.
- Job 5:18 For He wounds, but He also binds; He strikes, but His hands also heal.
- Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
- Matthew 11:5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.
- Luke 4:27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”