A number of years ago, God challenged me about my attitude to his law (benign neglect) from Psalm 119. When I learned to love the law, I discovered insights that I had not seen before. The hardest to love was Leviticus, but when I re-examined it in the light of Jesus ministry, I discovered that it describes spiritual warfare in the season before Jesus came to earth (quarantine was part of that battle).
According to God's law, quarantining sick people is a sensible response to an epidemic. God provided quarantine rules for sick people to prevent disease from spreading within the communities where his people lived (Leviticus 13-15; Numbers 5:1-4). A number of things should be noted.
Quarantine functioned within local communities. Moses encouraged the Israelites to quarantine people who became sick with infectious diseases.
Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.” The Israelites did so; they sent them outside the camp. They did just as the LORD had instructed Moses (Num 5:3-4).
The quarantine actions were taken by the people.Sick people were expected to remain outside the camp. This was essential while they were travelling through the wilderness in tents and living in very close proximity to each other.
They remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp (Lev 13:46).
I presume that once they were settled in the land, they would be quarantined to dwelling on the edge of their towns and villages.People were required to care for their neighbours, so they would be expected to provide food and shelter for people who were unable to get food, because they were quarantined. According to Leviticus 19:18,
Love your neighbor as yourself.
The people living in the community where the person who was quarantined would need to provide them with food. If their house was quarantined, they would be provided with safe shelter.Sick people and their families were quarantined. Healthy people were not isolated or quarantined (unlike modern shutdowns).
In the OT Law, there is no central government to declare and enforce quarantines.
The quarantine was primarily voluntary, but was enforced by social pressure. People could separate themselves from those how were sick without fear of criticism.
The assessment of sick people was done by the priests, but it was the people and their families who decided someone needed to be brought to the priest.
They must be brought to the priest. (Lev 13:9).
The owner of the house must go and tell the priest (Lev 14:35).
A family home was a sanctuary. No one has the authority to enter a home without permission (Deut 24:10-11). Responsibility for seeking advice about the need for quarantine rested with the person and the family. They had to take initiative and seek the advice of the priest.
They must present themselves to the priest (Lev 13:19).
The priest was not told to go and seek people out. This was mostly self-quarantining.When people had recovered from the sickness, they went to a priest in the community to prove that they were fully well.
I have wondered why people were asked to show themselves to the priests, given that they were not experts on health conditions. They were experts on holiness, so they were expected to discern the work of the spiritual powers of evil. However, I presume the main reason was that someone in society had to assess cases to ensure that sick people were treated fairly. Repeatedly checking sick people was a risky task, and priestly robes were not PPE. Priests were supposedly closer to God, so they could be seen as being safer than anyone else to do this task.
A person with an infection must not be touched (Lev 15:7).
Spitting was considered to be dangerous, if someone had an infectious disease (Lev 15:10).
Leviticus advocates regular hand washing (Lev 15:11).
Cleaning surfaces and utensils that could be infected was also important for infection control (Lev 15:13).
The beds and clothes of a person with an infection must be cleaned carefully (Lev 15:4-6).
Clothing that could be infected was burned (Lev 13:47-58).
When parts of a house were contaminated, they were to be removed and buried. If that did not prevent the contamination from spreading, the house should be destroyed. The owner of the house was expected to do this (Lev 14:45). He would have to rely on his family and neighbours for shelter.
An additional reason for quarantining sick people was that in some situations (not always) the sickness could be a sign that the person was under spiritual attack (Numbers 12). The risk of spiritual attack was the reason why the person who had been quarantined made an offering (Lev 14:1-32). The tabernacle offerings were essential for spiritual protection.
Jesus understood spiritual protection, so he cut through the harsh quarantine imposed on a leper and touched him. He also healed the man, which is a better solution than quarantine (Mark 1:40-41).
Leviticus refers to a range of skin diseases, including any nodule/swelling (s'eth) or scab (cappachath) or a bright spot (cappachath) which was a scourge/contagion (nega) (Lev 13:2. These words go far beyond the disease called leprosy today. The passage refers to any contagious skin disease.
Contamination of clothing and dwellings was considered to be a problem. The evidence looked for was a stain that kept growing. This could cover a range of mildews and organic contaminations.
Leviticus also quarantines a person with an unusual bodily discharge (zoob) (Lev 15:2). This is not limited to discharges from the skin. The Hebrew refers to a "fast flow", so this reference could include vomit and diarrhoea. The reference to the seat a person was sitting on becoming unclean suggests that it definitely includes the latter (Lev 15:6) and the reference to a contaminated bowl suggests it includes vomit (Lev 15: 12).
