Leprosy was “the disease [that] was regarded as a living death.”191 This can be seen from Aaron’s description of his sister Miriam when she became leprous: “Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s womb” (Num. 12:12). In Leviticus, the leper’s awful state is described: “He is a leprous man, he is [ceremonially] unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean” (Lev. 13:44).
Leviticus 13–14 deals with multiple laws regarding lepers and leprosy; specific terms in these chapters pertain directly to the temple, including priest(s) (93 times), atonement (7 times), tabernacle (twice), sacrificial blood (7 times), and sacrificial offerings (25 times). Furthermore, clean, unclean, and cleanse (these three words are used a total of 74 times in these chapters) are technical terms that pertain to ceremonial purity or impurity, rather than the temporal concepts of one being soiled, unhygienic, or smudged with dirt or grime.
Many of the symbols in Leviticus 13–14 are evident: the priest making atonement for the cleansed leper expresses Jesus making atonement for each of us; the sacrificial animal and its blood points to Jesus’s infinite sacrifice and His blood; the ceremonially unclean leper points to a spiritually unclean person; and the death-like symptoms of the leper suggest a spiritually dead person.