Leviticus 15:1–2: “And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: “When any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge is unclean.”’”

December 29th, 2022 by Pastor Ed in devotional

In this chapter, the law is concerned with controlling and preventing outbreaks of infectious diseases, like staph infection. These laws are related to hygiene and are amazingly accurate by modern-medical standards and practices used in hospitals today.

The term isolation is a common term used today to describe what is done to a patient who has such an infection. Many types of infectious diseases, besides Staphylococcal infections, require the isolation of the patient. Isolation is done in many kinds of cases of encephalitis, as well as more deadly diseases like Ebola and HHF (human hemorrhagic fever). Almost all communicable infections in modern hospitals are handled by patient isolation, but this did not come into practice until 1847.

In April 1847, an Austrian physician, Dr. Ignal Semmelweis (ob/gyn), noticed that healthy woman who were examined after doctors had done early morning autopsies, began to come down with the same diseases the autopsied patients had died of. He enacted new hospital rules that required surgeons to change clothes and wash after autopsies, and in between each patient, which is what we find God teaching the Hebrews to do in Leviticus 15. Not surprisingly, disease in Semmelweis’ wards dropped like a rock; however, the status symbol for doctors of that day were their bloody lab coats, and the bloodier the lab coat the busier and more important the doctor. In spite of several published papers verifying Semmelweis’ results, he was fired.

The long-term effects of the medical community not heeding Semmelweis’ findings were far reaching. During the US civil war alone, hundreds perhaps even thousands of soldiers who were wounded in combat, later died of infection simply because the surgeons tending them weren’t washing between patients.

The cleansing of a communicable disease, just like the cleansing from leprosy and sin, required a sacrifice. There was no substitute for the blood of a specific kind of sacrifice, and in the cleansing from sin, there is no substitute for the blood of Jesus. Without His shed blood applied to the sinner’s heart, there is no redemption. But because of His great mercy, He offers redemption to all who will humble themselves before Him and repent of their sins.

“Thank you, Lord, for the cleansing from sin that You give us today.”