"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous[a] or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. 3 You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.” 4 And the people of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp; as the Lord said to Moses, so the people of Israel did."
Numbers 5:1-4
This chapter deals with three issues, and three specific types of evil, which must be dealt with if God's blessing is to remain upon the people: leprosy (14), guilt and restitution (510), and infidelity between husband and wife (1131). It is important to view these regulations in their proper context, because of the possibility of misunderstanding them and missing the point they are making. It would be easy, for example, to take this word about lepers out of its context, and set it in contrast with passages in the New Testament which tell of Jesus' com- passionate acts of cleansing, and say, 'How different is the New Testament attitude to that of the Old, and how harsh the spirit that this passage breathes in comparison with the gospels.' But this is an entirely false attitude, and one open to fatal objection. It would be just as easy to take isolated passages of Scripture and put them together in contrast to reach the opposite conclusion, viz. that the Old Testament is much more compassionate than the New (com- pare, e.g. Acts 5:1ff, or 1 Corinthians 5:1ff, with the cleansing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5. No; we cannot say, on the basis of these verses before us, 'Does the God of the Old Testament have no care for lepers?' The compassion shown in the Old Testament and in the New alike reveal the attitude of God in His love and grace to the poor and needy - and that is the same, in every age, and in every dispensation. The firmness, however, and the stringency, shown here (as in Acts 5 and in 1 Corinthians 5) refer to the discipline of God among His people. And the question is not whether or not God has a care for the afflicted; it is that of keeping the people of God pure and undefiled. This has already been underlined in earlier chapters, in the idea of the separated character of the people, called to be distinct, in a spiritual non- conformity with the world. This is God's great concern, to preserve the identity of His people as separate unto Him. The image of purity was to be preserved at any cost in their corporate life. Only thus could Israel be a light to lighten the Gentiles.