And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean.
The priest shall look ... The leprosy, as covering the person with a white scaly scurf, has always been accounted an offensive blemish rather than a serious malady in the East, unless when it assumed its less common and malignant forms. When a Hebrew priest, after a careful inspection, discovered under the cutaneous blemish the distinctive signs of contagious leprosy, the person was immediately pronounced unclean, and is supposed to have been sent out of the camp to a lazaretto provided for that purpose. If the symptoms appeared to be doubtful, he ordered the person to be kept in domestic confinement for seven days, when he was subjected to a second examination; and if, during the previous week, the eruption had subsided, or appeared to be harmless, he was instantly discharged. But if the eruption continued unabated and still doubtful, he was put under surveillance for another week; at the end of which the character of the disorder never failed to manifest itself, and he was either doomed to perpetual exclusion from society, or allowed to go at large.
Leviticus 13:6. If the plague be somewhat dark, х keehaah (H3544) hanega` (H5061)] - if the spot become faint or pale [Septuagint, amaura, faint or slight - i:e., beginning to disappear, Tihªrow (H2891) hakoheen (H3548), the priest shall clean him - i:e., pronounce him clean]. A person who had thus been detained on suspicion, when at length set at liberty, was obliged to 'wash his clothes' х kibec (H3526), he shall wash his clothes by treading or tramping them, as the word denotes], as having been tainted by ceremonial pollution; and the purification through which he was required to go was, in the spirit of the Mosaic dispensation, symbolical of that inward purity it was instituted to promote.