If the rising be white. — If the distemper actually returns, one of two symptoms indicates it. A white rising will be noticed in the skin, which changes the black hair into white. The white hair only then indicates the disorder when it co-exists with the white rising or swelling which produced it. If the original white swelling, which discoloured the hair, disappears, and a fresh white swelling forms itself around the existing white hair, it is no indication of uncleanness.
And there be quick raw flesh in the rising. — Rather, or if there be, or and likewise if there be, &c. This clause gives the second of the two symptoms, either of which indicates the return of the disorder. According to the administrators of the law during the second Temple, the phrase here translated “quick raw flesh” in the Authorised Version, which literally means “the quickening of live flesh,” denotes “sound flesh,” or a spot in the flesh assuming the appearance of life after it had been paled by the whiteness which overspread the whole surface. The size of this spot of live flesh, which indicated the disease and made the patient unclean, had to be at least that of a lentil. This rendering is given by the LXX,, the Chaldee, &c. An insulated spot of sound flesh in the midst of a tubercle was considered a sign of the fretting and consuming progress which the disease made in the surrounding flesh.