Let her not be as one dead. — This is another of the places in which the Scribes are said to have altered the text. The original is said to have been as follows: — Let her not be as one dead, who proceeded from the womb of our mother, and half of our flesh be consumed. The leper was “as one dead” in two respects — (1) as being shut out from inter course with his brethren; and (2) as causing ceremonial defilement in the case of those who were brought into contact with him, similar to that which was caused by touching a dead body. “He was,” as Archbishop Trench has remarked, “a dreadful parable of death” (On the Miracles, p. 214). In the most severe types of leprosy there was, as the same writer has observed, “a dissolution, little by little, of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away” (Ibid, p. 213).
Related Commentaries of Numbers 12:12
Numbers 12:12
12 Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother's womb.