tagious, was so hateful to Moses, that, out of concern
for the health of the possessor, and for the goods kept in them, he
ordered them to be altogether pulled down. If Moses had entertained the
views on the power of the magistrates which lie at the foundation of
this, he could not have been an ambassador of God,--even apart
altogether from the absurdity of the measure. But the shallowness and
untenableness of _Michaelis'_ view will appear still more strongly,
when we state the positive argument for our view. It is this: Leprosy
is the outward image of sin; that, therefore, which is done upon the
leper, is, in reality, done upon the sinner. Every leper, therefore,
was a living sermon, a loud admonition to keep unspotted from the
world. The exclusion of the lepers from the camp, from the holy city,
conveyed figuratively quite the same lesson, as is done in Words by
John, in Revel. xxi. 27: [Greek: Kai ou me eiselthe eis auten] [Pg 453]
[Greek: pan koinon kai poioun bdelugma kai pseudos], and by Paul, in
Ephes. v. 5: [Greek: touto gar iste ginoskontes, hoti pas pornos, e
akathartos, e pleonektes ... ouk echei kleronomian en te basileia tou
Christou kai Theou]; comp. Gal. v. 19, 21. Now it is clearly seen what
is the Prophet's meaning in including the hill of the lepers in the
holy city. That which hitherto was unclean becomes clean; the Kingdom
of God now does violence to the sinners, while, hitherto, the sinners
had done violence to the Kingdom of God. It is only when we take this
view of leprosy, that we account for the fact, that just this disease
so frequently occurs as the theocratic punishment of sin. The image of
sin is best suited for reflecting it; he who is a sinner before God, is
represented as a sinner in the eyes of man also, by the circumstance
that he must exhibit before men the image of sin. God took care that
ordinarily the image and the thing itself were perfectly coincident;
although, no doubt, there were exceptions,--cases where God, according
to His wise and holy purposes, allowed that one relatively innocent (in
the case of a perfectly innocent man, if such an one existed, that
would not be possible, except in the case of Christ who bore _our_
disease), had to bear the image of sin, _e.g._, in the case of such as
were in danger of self-righteousness. As a theocratic punishment,
leprosy is found especially with such as had secretly sinned, or had
surrounded their sin with a good appearance, which, in th