‏ Leviticus 14:9-12

Lev 14:9-12

The second act (Lev 14:9-20) effected his restoration to fellowship with Jehovah, and his admission to the sanctuary. It commenced on the seventh day after the first with a fresh purification; viz., shaving off all the hair from the head, the beard, the eyebrows - in fact, the whole body, - washing the clothes, and bathing the body. On the eighth day there followed a sacrificial expiation; and for this the person to be expiated was to bring two sheep without blemish, a ewe-lamb of a year old, three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a meat-offering, and a log (or one-twelfth of a hin, i.e., as much as six hens’ eggs, or 15·62 Rhenish cubic inches) of oil; and the priest was to present him, together with these gifts, before Jehovah, i.e., before the altar of burnt-offering. The one lamb was then offered by the priest as a trespass-offering, together with the log of oil; and both of these were waves by him. By the waving, which did not take place on other occasions in connection with sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, the lamb and oil were transferred symbolically to the Lord; and by the fat that these sacrificial gifts represented the offerer, the person to be consecrated to the Lord by means of them was dedicated to His service again, just as the Levites were dedicated to the Lord by the ceremony of waving (Num 8:11, Num 8:15). But a trespass-offering was required as the consecration-offering, because the consecration itself served as a restoration to all the rights of the priestly covenant nation, which had been lost by the mortal ban of leprosy.
Others, e.g., Riehm and Oehler, regard this trespass-offering also as a kind of mulcta, or satisfaction rendered for the fact, that during the whole period of his sickness, and so long as he was excluded from the congregation, the leper had failed to perform his theocratical duties, and Jehovah had been injured in consequence. But if this was the idea upon which the trespass-offering was founded, the law would necessarily have required that trespass-offerings should be presented on the recovery of persons who had been affected with diseased secretions; for during the continuance of their disease, which often lasted a long time, even as much as 12 years (Luk 8:43), they were precluded from visiting the sanctuary or serving the Lord with sacrifices, because they were unclean, and therefore could not perform their theocratical duties.
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