Learning from Leprosy

Learning from Leprosy

Condensed and adapted from Alan Gillen’s The Genesis of Germs

In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, tsara’ath was translated as aphe lepras. These words in Greek implied a skin condition that spread over the body.

Others have suggested that the translation of tsara’ath includes “molds.” ... which contaminates buildings and causes respiratory distress, memory loss, and rash, lends support to the translation of tsara’ath to include “mold.”

Leprosy has terrified humanity since ancient times and was reported as early as 600 BC in India, China, and Egypt. Hansen’s disease is still a major health problem in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For many centuries, leprosy was considered a curse of God, often associated with sin. It did not kill, but neither did it seem to end. Instead, it lingered for years, causing the tissues to degenerate and deforming the body.

References to leprosy have a different emphasis in the New Testament. They stress God’s desire to heal. Jesus freely touched people with leprosy. While people with leprosy traditionally suffered banishment from family and neighbors, Jesus broke from the tradition. He treated lepers with compassion, touching and healing them.

Although we can’t know all the reasons that God allows disease into our lives, biblical leprosy is a powerful symbol reminding us of sin’s spread and its horrible consequences. Like leprosy, sin starts out small but can then spread, leading to other sins and causing great damage to our relationship with God and others.

Studying leprosy helps us see why pain is a valuable “gift,” a survival mechanism to warn us of danger in this cursed world. Without pain and suffering, we might be like lepers, unable to recognize that something is terribly wrong and that we need the healing touch of God. As Dr. Brand said, “I cannot think of a greater gift that I could give my leprosy patients than pain.”

Let us not be too quick to remove pain in our lives (whether physical, emotional, social, or spiritual pain). It may be God’s megaphone to get our attention that something is seriously wrong and that we should flee to the One who created us.