Reading… and Thinking

The priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. The priest shall then take some of the log of oil, pour it in the palm of his own left hand, dip his right forefinger into the oil in his palm, and with his finger sprinkle some of it before the LORD seven times. The priest is to put some of the oil remaining in his palm on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt offering. The rest of the oil in his palm the priest shall put on the head of the one to be cleansed and make atonement for him before the LORD.

– Leviticus 14:14-18 (NIV)

Honest now – do you read Leviticus? Have you ever? If you are prone to skipping it, bear in mind that Jesus drew the second-greatest commandment from Leviticus! That’s right: “Love your neighbor as yourself” comes from Leviticus. So, clearly Jesus didn’t skip over it!

There’s other good stuff too, but it does sometimes take a bit more work to pull it out.

Case in point, the strange procedure in these verses: take blood (and later oil) and dab it on a man's right ear, then on his right thumb, then on his right big toe. Puzzling, all by itself. But the puzzle goes deeper.

This chapter is from the section of Leviticus about leprosy – how to identify it in a person, garment, or house, what to do about it, and right here, how someone can be deemed to be cleansed of it. (By the way, in the Bible “leprosy” is used of a much wider variety of diseases than the specific one we call leprosy today.)

Now here's the kicker to the ear-thumb-toe puzzle. Only two kinds of people are ever treated this way: lepers, when they've been cleansed, and the Aaronic priests, at their ordination. The similarity extends to anointing the head with oil, and a very similar set of sacrifices. I don't know about you, but putting those two situations into the same basket strikes me as really odd. Lepers are the ultra-unclean. The priests are the ultra-sanctified.

Under the law itself, this is baffling. But under the new covenant in Christ, we can see how it makes sense. Leprosy is an outstanding symbol for sin. It resides in the flesh, it literally corrupts the person afflicted with it, it makes the bearer an outcast, it is incurable, and ultimately it kills the afflicted person. But the law of the leper says, if a person could be healed, then they are welcomed back in full. They are given their life back. Which is what happens to us in Christ – our leprosy (sin) is healed, and we are welcomed into fellowship with the Father and the Son. We are given a new life. What kind of life should the new one be? Not a repeat of the old! The law says that the former leper should go through the equivalent of the consecration of a priest. And so should we. The new life we've been given is to be consecrated to the service of the Lord. We are to go from being ultra-unclean, to being ultra-sanctified.

But what's the deal with the ear, the thumb, and the toe? Well, I really don't know. We don't have much to go on. We could speculate that what the priest (the former leper) hears, what he does with his hands, and where he goes with his feet, should all be consecrated to the Lord. That's true, but what about the mouth, to indicate what he says? What about the forehead, to indicate what he thinks? These figures show up elsewhere in scripture – why not here? I don't know. Guess there’s some more digging to do!