Varieties of Leprosy

Origen interpreted the instructions about leprosy (Leviticus 13-14) as an “anatomy of spiritual disease” (Elliott, Engaging Leviticus , 132):

“There are six types of spiritual plague, which can be taken as three pairs of types - each pair composed of disease that is curable (in this life) and incurable (in this life, though curable in the age to come). Isaiah 1:6 reminds us that superficial ointment treatment will not work and Jeremiah in a number of places teaches that painful scarring can be healthy, in God’s way of cleansing, even when one is left weak and humbled. Bright coloring symbolizes those who sense is oppressed and therefore act against reason, The third type is where there is an ulcer from which a white scar and redness results: this shows impurity in the soul with the bubbling up of impure desires and unclean thoughts. Even if cured through the grace of faith and remission of sins, there remains a scar as some evidence of this. There is a fourth type, a burning, which comes from a lust for human glory and arises when someone goes back to their olds ways immediately after being healed. The fifth affects the head and occurs when someone does not have Christ as head, such as Epicurus who was ruled by pleasure, or it affects the beard, showing a spiritual sickness even in the supposedly mature. Sixthly there is a baldness that is not unclean, as such, rejecting things that are by nature dead but prone to having new growth and uncleanness.”

The details are not convincing. But the fact that Origen asked what all these details could teach us should inspire similar meditations.