Leviticus 13-14 tells us everything there is to know about what to do with people with skin diseases. That is, everything there was to know at the time. I don’t know enough to know what the medical situation was back then, but it seems that it was probably fairly unsophisticated. And these chapters are probably the extent of what they knew as medical advice at the time (I don’t actually know whether any of that is true, I’m just speculating). An interesting thing, though, is that in these chapters, as there have been in a few other Leviticus chapters, there is a specific mention of what happens if you’re too poor to to be able to afford the “proper,” prescribed treatment methods. Even as strangely harsh and specific the rules were back then about how to treat people with disease, they still showed flexibility and compassion toward the less fortunate.
21 Now if the person is poor and cannot afford these things, they can bring one male sheep as a compensation offering, to be lifted up in order to make reconciliation for them; a grain offering of one-tenth of an ephah of choice flour mixed with oil; a log of oil; 22 and two turtledoves or two pigeons, whatever they can afford—one as a purification offering and the other as an entirely burned offering. (Leviticus 14: 21-22) [emphasis mine]
My mind, when I originally read it, stopped there, but the Fourth Church Youth video on this focuses on the need for universal health care in the United States. How right this is. Though the Leviticus means for treating and separating people with disease is primitive, they still had the wherewithal to make sure that even the poor were treated. Their motivation might have been just so they could prevent the general population from getting sick by the poor person spreading disease, but in that, as we should be now, they at least recognized that the health of the whole community depends on the health of the least.
ohthatswhatitsays 