You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean. (Leviticus 15:31)This is, I'm afraid, a rather difficult reading pertaining to infectious skin diseases, mold and... discharges. Let's bring it up to date.
A while back, some people I know were quarantined in their apartment because of viral pneumonia - complete with a sign on their door and everything. The health department hadn't gotten a handle on the infection and didn't want it spread to the schools where the kids attended.
When's the last time you heard about meningitis spreading through a college dormitory? With all those kids living in close contact, that's one of the health concerns of the 21st century... a fertile breeding ground for germs and disease.
Here we have the account of thousands and thousands of people traveling through the wilderness in close community (anything infecting one member could easily spread to others). Two things which scared any Ancient Near East people were leprosy and mildew. Infected people could not cohabit with healthy people, and infected homes could not be inhabited at all. So in a sense, once these two things got rooted in a group of people, they very effectively broke community. God's all about community.
What other infections could break their God-given community? The worship of false gods? Immorality? Gossip? Resenting those in leadership?
That was then - this is now.
What infections can break our worshiping community? Should we be any less careful in preventing their spread today?
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