Leviticus 14 Summary and Study Guide

A priest walks out of the camp carrying two live birds, a stick of cedar, a strip of scarlet wool and a sprig of hyssop, going to find a man who has been living outside the camp alone. This Leviticus 14 summary and study guide follows what he does when he finds him, and why the same ceremony is later performed on somebody’s house.

Setting the Stage

God had moved into the middle of the camp. At the end of Exodus a cloud settled on the new tent and His glory filled it, so Moses could not go inside (Exodus 40:34-35), and everything in Leviticus since then answers one question: how do ordinary people live next door to a holy God? For the wider setting, see our Book of Leviticus Summary by Chapter.

Chapter 13 gave the priests a manual for identifying a spreading skin disease, and it ended by putting the affected man outside the camp with his clothes torn, his head bare, a covering on his upper lip, and the cry “Unclean, unclean” (Leviticus 13:45-46). He was to live alone. It never says what happens if he gets better. Chapter 14 is that answer.

Comprehensive Leviticus 14 Summary

The priest goes out of the camp and looks at the man, and everything turns on what he is looking for: the disease has to be gone already.

The priest calls for two live birds, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop. One bird is killed in a clay pot over fresh running water so its blood drains into it. The other is dipped in that blood and water along with the cedar, the scarlet and the hyssop, and the man is sprinkled seven times, pronounced clean, and the living bird is let go into the open field.

Then the man launders everything he owns, shaves his whole body, and bathes, and he may walk back into the camp. For another seven days his own home stays shut to him. On the seventh day he shaves everything again, eyebrows included, washes again, and is clean.

On the eighth day he comes to the tabernacle door with two male lambs, a ewe lamb, flour and oil. One lamb is waved before God and killed as a trespass offering, and its blood is dabbed on three points on his right side: the ear, the thumb and the big toe.

Oil is sprinkled seven times before God, put on those same three places over the blood, and the rest poured on his head. The sin offering, burnt offering and meat offering follow, that last one being flour and oil rather than flesh, and he is clean.

A man who cannot afford three lambs brings one lamb and two birds, and the priest repeats every step over them.

The chapter then looks ahead to Canaan, where a house may develop a spreading growth in its walls. The priest empties it, inspects it, shuts it up for a week, and either strips out the affected stones or condemns the house. A house that comes clean receives the same two-bird ceremony.

One Word Summary

• Cleansing: the chapter’s own word, start to finish.
• Restoration: the route back to a place he lost.
• Readmission: three doors, opened in order.

In One Sentence

A man healed of a spreading skin disease was brought back into Israel by an eight-day procedure that ended with a priest putting blood and oil on his right ear, hand and foot at the tabernacle door, and Moses then records the same ceremony being performed on a house in Canaan.

Theme of Leviticus 14

Leviticus 14 is about the way back, and it opens with a priest walking out of the camp to a man who could not walk in. Running alongside it is the reason a way back was needed: in this chapter being unclean is about access rather than guilt, and Moses never charges the man with a sin or calls him forgiven. The way back is never time served either, because after eight days he still arrives at a door where a lamb dies. And what God requires for a man He requires for the walls he lives in, so the chapter does the whole thing again to a house.

Leviticus 14 Outline

• Leviticus 14:1-3: God gives Moses the law of the cleansing, and the priest goes outside the camp to see whether the disease has gone.
• Leviticus 14:4-7: Two birds, cedar, scarlet and hyssop are brought; one bird is killed over running water, the man is sprinkled seven times and pronounced clean, and the living bird is released.
• Leviticus 14:8-9: He washes and shaves, enters the camp, waits seven days outside his own tent, then shaves and washes again.
• Leviticus 14:10-13: On the eighth day he brings three lambs, flour and oil, and the priest waves one lamb and kills it as a trespass offering.
• Leviticus 14:14-18: The priest puts blood and then oil on the man’s right ear, thumb and toe, and pours the last of the oil on his head.
• Leviticus 14:19-20: The sin offering, burnt offering and meat offering complete the atonement, and the man is clean.
• Leviticus 14:21-23: A man who cannot afford that brings one lamb, less flour, the same oil, and two birds on the eighth day.
• Leviticus 14:24-32: The priest carries out the identical ceremony over the poor man’s offering, and the law for him closes.
• Leviticus 14:33-35: God tells Moses and Aaron that in Canaan He will put this growth in a house, and the owner is to report it to the priest.
• Leviticus 14:36-38: The priest has the house emptied, inspects the walls, and shuts the house up for seven days.
• Leviticus 14:39-42: On the seventh day the affected stones are torn out and thrown outside the city, and the house is scraped and replastered.
• Leviticus 14:43-45: If the growth returns the priest condemns the house, and it is pulled down and carried outside the city.
• Leviticus 14:46-47: Anyone who entered, slept or ate in the house while it was shut up is unclean.
• Leviticus 14:48-53: If it does not return the house is pronounced clean and given the same two-bird ceremony.
• Leviticus 14:54-57: Moses closes the law of leprosy and states what it was for.

What the Cleansing Cost

The chapter prices the ceremony twice, once at full rate and once for a man whose means fell short. Three of the five items drop. Two do not.

The lamb of the trespass offering does not move, and neither does the oil. Two lambs become two birds and the flour falls to a third, so the cost drops a long way.

Observations from Leviticus 14

The Priest Walked Out to Him (14:3)

Through the offerings of Leviticus the worshipper comes to the tabernacle door (Leviticus 1:3; 4:4; 12:6). Here God sends the priest the other way. Verse 3 says “the priest shall go forth out of the camp,” which means the priest leaves the camp and walks out to where the man has been living alone.

The man stays where he is until the priest has been out to him and come back. He had no choice in it, because the camp was closed to him. The whole route back begins with somebody coming out.

Chapter 13 Never Mentions Blood, and Chapter 14 Is Full of It (14:4-20)

The two chapters share a subject and use two different vocabularies. Leviticus 13 puts the word “skin” in thirty-seven of its fifty-nine verses, and never once uses the words blood, offering or atonement. Leviticus 14 never uses the word “skin” at all, and it names an offering in thirteen of its fifty-seven verses, blood in seven, and atonement in seven.

Chapter 13 is a chapter of looking, and the priest’s whole job in it is to examine and pronounce. Chapter 14 is a chapter of sacrifice, sprinkling and anointing. Diagnosis and restoration turn out to be two different works, and only one of them costs an animal.

He Was Marked Where a Priest Was Marked (14:14, 14:17)

The blood goes on three places: “the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot” (Leviticus 14:14). The priest puts blood on the man’s right earlobe, his right thumb and his right big toe.

Those three points are word for word what Moses did to Aaron and his sons on the day they were made priests (Leviticus 8:23-24; Exodus 29:20). A man who days earlier had been living outside the camp is handled at the tabernacle door the way a priest is handled on the day he is installed.

Then verse 17 adds a step Aaron’s own ordination did not include. Oil goes on the same three places, “upon the blood of the trespass offering,” and the rest is poured on his head as Aaron’s was (Leviticus 8:12). At his ordination Aaron got blood on the ear, hand and foot and oil on the head. This man gets both on both.

The One Price That Never Fell (14:21-22)

God repeatedly lowers the cost of an offering for people who cannot meet it, and this chapter does it too. Verse 21 begins “And if he be poor, and cannot get so much,” which is God making room for a man who cannot afford the full ceremony.

Two chapters earlier God made the same allowance for a mother, and He shaped it differently. A mother who could not afford a lamb brought no lamb at all: “if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering” (Leviticus 12:8). Both of her offerings became birds.

Here two of the three lambs become birds and one does not. Verse 21 still says “he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering,” and that is the lamb whose blood goes on his ear, his hand and his foot.

Leviticus 14 gives no reason for the difference, and it is not safe to build a doctrine on a silence. The two texts say this much between them: God let the price fall a long way, and He left one animal standing at the point where the man was let back in.

Difficult Verses Explained

Why Does God Say He Put the Plague of Leprosy in a House?

Because that is what the verse says: “and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession” (Leviticus 14:34). God tells Israel that when they reach Canaan, He is the one who will put this growth into a house.

Bible teachers read that in more than one way. Many take it at full strength, as something God does directly, and point to Zechariah 5:3-4, where God sends a curse that enters a thief’s house and consumes its timber and stones, and to Isaiah 45:7, where God says “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”

God there claims to be behind both the good and the calamity that come to people. Others read the wording as a way of speaking Scripture uses elsewhere, in which God is said to do what He allows: Exodus says both that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21) and that Pharaoh hardened it himself (Exodus 8:15). Some suggest a third possibility, that Israel would inherit Canaanite houses and some of that property already stood under judgment.

The chapter does not settle which of these is in view. It does settle that the house is God’s business, and that His answer to it is an inspection, a repair, and a ceremony of cleansing.

Why Two Birds, and What Happens to the One That Flies Away?

One bird is killed and the other is released alive, marked with the first one’s blood. Verse 7 says the priest “shall let the living bird loose into the open field,” which means he releases it into open country, still marked with the blood it was dipped in.

Many connect it to the goat sent away on the Day of Atonement, which bore Israel’s iniquities “unto a land not inhabited” (Leviticus 16:22), meaning the goat carried their guilt away into empty country, far from the camp and gone for good. On that reading the bird carries the man’s uncleanness away where it will not be found again. Others read it as a picture of the man himself, now free to go wherever he likes.

The second reading runs into a problem. The identical ceremony is performed on a house in verses 49 to 53, and a house is not set free to go anywhere. Neither bird is called a sin offering and neither is killed at the altar, so the parallel with the Day of Atonement is real without being exact.

Why Blood on the Right Ear, the Right Thumb and the Right Big Toe?

The chapter never explains the three points, so any reason has to be gathered from where else they appear.

Many Bible teachers understand them as standing for what a person hears, what he does with his hands, and where he walks, so that a whole life is claimed at once. That reading fits the pattern, and it is an inference rather than something Moses writes down.

One detail the chapter does not leave open is the side. All four times these places are named, in verses 14, 17, 25 and 28, they are the right ear, the right hand and the right foot, and in Scripture the right hand is the place of honour (Psalm 110:1).

What Had the Man Done Wrong, If the Chapter Asks for a Trespass Offering?

The chapter never says. A trespass offering, also called a guilt offering, normally answered a named wrong that had to be put right (Leviticus 5:15), and Leviticus 14 names no wrong at all.

The usual explanation is that during his time outside the camp he had been unable to bring God the offerings and worship he owed. That answer has a real weakness, which older commentators noticed: other people were shut out of the sanctuary for long periods too, and no trespass offering was required of them.

The chapter leaves this unexplained. It does make plain how much weight the offering carries: it is the offering waved before God, the offering whose blood marks the man, and the one offering a poor man still had to bring.

One offering is missing from the chapter altogether. Of the five main offerings in Leviticus, the peace offering is the only one it never calls for, and it never says why.

Common Misunderstandings

• That “leprosy” here means the disease we call leprosy today. The same Hebrew word is used of a garment (Leviticus 13:47-59) and of the plaster on a wall (Leviticus 14:34-53). Hansen’s disease, the modern illness, does not grow on a wall. The biblical word covers a range of spreading surface conditions.
• That the man was being purified from a sin he had committed. The chapter never names a sin and never uses the word forgiven, which is the word Leviticus uses when an actual sin is dealt with (Leviticus 4:26). Its verdict on him is “he shall be clean” (Leviticus 14:20).
• That the ceremony healed him. Verse 3 requires the healing to have happened before the priest begins. The ceremony restores a healed man to his place among God’s people.
• That the whole chapter is about mould. Verses 1 to 32 concern a person. Verses 33 to 57 concern a house. They share a word and a ceremony, and they are two different laws.
• That the point of the law was public health. These rules did have that effect, and God’s care for His people’s wellbeing is real. Even so, verse 36 has the house emptied so that its contents will not be counted unclean, which is a concern about ceremony rather than infection, and verse 57 gives the purpose in the chapter’s own words: “to teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean.”

Christ Connection

The clearest link is the direction the priest walks. In verse 3 he leaves the camp and goes out to a man who cannot come in, and Hebrews takes up exactly that picture: “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (Hebrews 13:12).

Jesus died outside the city, in the place where the unclean were sent, so that the people He was making holy could be brought near. The next verse tells Christians to go out to Him there.

The Gospels also show Jesus treating this chapter as still standing. When He cleansed a man of the disease He sent him straight to a priest, telling him to “offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them” (Matthew 8:4). The gift Moses commanded is Leviticus 14:10-32. Jesus did not set the chapter aside; He filled its waiting room.

Four more connections run out from the chapter:

• Blood and water together. The bird dies over fresh water in a clay pot, so that blood and water are mixed together, and the mixture is what touches the man (Leviticus 14:5-6). John records that when a soldier pierced Jesus, “forthwith came there out blood and water” (John 19:34), and 1 John 5:6 says He came “not by water only, but by water and blood.”
• The materials at the cross. Hebrews 9:19 names blood, water, scarlet wool and hyssop together in one sentence about Moses, and hyssop appears again at the crucifixion when a sponge is lifted to Jesus on it (John 19:29). Scarlet and hyssop, two of the four things this ceremony called for, turn up in both places.
• The touch that ran the wrong way. In this system uncleanness travelled by contact, and Numbers 19:22 states the rule plainly: whatever an unclean person touches becomes unclean. Matthew records that Jesus “put forth his hand, and touched him” (Matthew 8:3), laying a hand on a man others kept their distance from, and the man came away clean.
• The door standing open. This chapter is about a man who could not come in. Hebrews says believers now have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” and tells them to draw near (Hebrews 10:19-22). Christians may walk straight in, and the reason given is blood.

When, Where, and Why

• When: In Israel’s second year out of Egypt, at Sinai. The tabernacle had been raised on the first day of that year (Exodus 40:17), and Aaron and his sons had only just been installed (Leviticus 8-9), so the whole arrangement was weeks old when this law was given.
• Where: Three places, and the chapter names all three. Outside the camp (14:3), inside the camp but outside the man’s own tent (14:8), and the door of the tabernacle (14:11). The distance between the first and the last is what the first half of the chapter is about. A fourth place is added later and belongs to a different time: a house in the land of Canaan (14:34).
• Why: Because God had settled in the middle of a camp full of bodies and, one day, houses. Moses is recording how a person who had been ruled out gets ruled back in, and verse 57 says the law existed “to teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean.”

Key Verses

“And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;”

Leviticus 14:3

The priest leaves the camp, goes to the man, and examines him to see whether the disease has already gone. This is the verse the chapter hangs on, and it separates two things readers often merge. The healing is God’s work and has already happened. What follows is about getting the man home.

“And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days.”

Leviticus 14:8

He washes his clothes, shaves off all his hair, bathes, and is then allowed back into the camp, though he must stay outside his own tent for a week. The verse shows the restoration arriving in stages rather than all at once, and it names a stage that is easy to read past: back among his people, and still not home.

“And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar: and the priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean.”

Leviticus 14:20

The priest presents the last two offerings, makes atonement for the man, and the man is clean. The verse puts the work in the priest’s hands and God’s rather than in the man’s own.

“To teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean: this is the law of leprosy.”

Leviticus 14:57

These laws existed to teach Israel how to tell the difference between what was unclean and what was clean. Moses states the purpose himself, which saves the reader from guessing at one. The chapter was training a nation to know the difference in a camp where God was living.

Key Lessons from Leviticus 14

• Being shut out of God’s presence was not the same as being guilty before Him (Leviticus 14:19-20).
• Restoration reached him in stages, back among his people first and into his own home a week later, and God set the pace of it (Leviticus 14:8-9).
• Waiting out the days did not make him clean, because the road back ran through a door where a lamb was killed (Leviticus 14:10-20).
• He came back marked the way the priests were marked, and with oil the priests themselves never received (Leviticus 14:14, 14:17).
• God let the cost of the ceremony fall a long way for a poor man and still required the lamb whose blood marked him (Leviticus 14:21-22).
• God’s concern reached past the man to the walls he lived inside, and He gave a house the same ceremony He gave a person (Leviticus 14:48-53).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: 21 Life-Changing Lessons from Leviticus 14.

Bible Study Questions

1. Read Leviticus 13:45-46 and then Leviticus 14:3. Where is the man at the start of each verse, and who moves first?
2. According to Leviticus 14:3, what has already happened before the priest arrives, and what does that tell you the ceremony was for?
3. Compare Leviticus 14:14 with Leviticus 8:23-24. What is identical in the two passages, and what does Leviticus 14:17 add that Leviticus 8 does not have?
4. The ceremony of Leviticus 14:4-7 is performed on a house in Leviticus 14:49-53. What does that rule out about what the released bird can mean?
5. Read Leviticus 14:21-22 beside Leviticus 12:8. What could the poor mother leave out that the poor man could not, and what reason does the chapter give?
6. Leviticus 4:26 and Leviticus 14:20 close their cases with different words. What is the difference, and why might it matter here?
7. Read Luke 17:11-19 with Leviticus 14 open. Where were those ten men sent, and what were they going to have to do when they arrived?
8. Hebrews 13:12-13 says Jesus suffered outside the gate and calls believers to follow Him there. How does Leviticus 14:3 change the way you read that call?

Frequently Asked Questions

Leviticus 14, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest:

3 And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;

4 Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:

5 And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water:

6 As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water:

7 And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field.

8 And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days.

9 But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off: and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean.

10 And on the eighth day he shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, and three tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and one log of oil.

11 And the priest that maketh him clean shall present the man that is to be made clean, and those things, before the LORD, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation:

12 And the priest shall take one he lamb, and offer him for a trespass offering, and the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the LORD:

13 And he shall slay the lamb in the place where he shall kill the sin offering and the burnt offering, in the holy place: for as the sin offering is the priest’s, so is the trespass offering: it is most holy:

14 And the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot:

15 And the priest shall take some of the log of oil, and pour it into the palm of his own left hand:

16 And the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle of the oil with his finger seven times before the LORD:

17 And of the rest of the oil that is in his hand shall the priest put upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering:

18 And the remnant of the oil that is in the priest’s hand he shall pour upon the head of him that is to be cleansed: and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the LORD.

19 And the priest shall offer the sin offering, and make an atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness; and afterward he shall kill the burnt offering:

20 And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar: and the priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean.

21 And if he be poor, and cannot get so much; then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering to be waved, to make an atonement for him, and one tenth deal of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering, and a log of oil;

22 And two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, such as he is able to get; and the one shall be a sin offering, and the other a burnt offering.

23 And he shall bring them on the eighth day for his cleansing unto the priest, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, before the LORD.

24 And the priest shall take the lamb of the trespass offering, and the log of oil, and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the LORD:

25 And he shall kill the lamb of the trespass offering, and the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot:

26 And the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his own left hand:

27 And the priest shall sprinkle with his right finger some of the oil that is in his left hand seven times before the LORD:

28 And the priest shall put of the oil that is in his hand upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the place of the blood of the trespass offering:

29 And the rest of the oil that is in the priest’s hand he shall put upon the head of him that is to be cleansed, to make an atonement for him before the LORD.

30 And he shall offer the one of the turtledoves, or of the young pigeons, such as he can get;

31 Even such as he is able to get, the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering, with the meat offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for him that is to be cleansed before the LORD.

32 This is the law of him in whom is the plague of leprosy, whose hand is not able to get that which pertaineth to his cleansing.

33 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,

34 When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession;

35 And he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house:

36 Then the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest go into it to see the plague, that all that is in the house be not made unclean: and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house:

37 And he shall look on the plague, and, behold, if the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strakes, greenish or reddish, which in sight are lower than the wall;

38 Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days:

39 And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague be spread in the walls of the house;

40 Then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the plague is, and they shall cast them into an unclean place without the city:

41 And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an unclean place:

42 And they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones; and he shall take other morter, and shall plaister the house.

43 And if the plague come again, and break out in the house, after that he hath taken away the stones, and after he hath scraped the house, and after it is plaistered;

44 Then the priest shall come and look, and, behold, if the plague be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the house: it is unclean.

45 And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the morter of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place.

46 Moreover he that goeth into the house all the while that it is shut up shall be unclean until the even.

47 And he that lieth in the house shall wash his clothes; and he that eateth in the house shall wash his clothes.

48 And if the priest shall come in, and look upon it, and, behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house was plaistered: then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed.

49 And he shall take to cleanse the house two birds, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:

50 And he shall kill the one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water:

51 And he shall take the cedar wood, and the hyssop, and the scarlet, and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the slain bird, and in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times:

52 And he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar wood, and with the hyssop, and with the scarlet:

53 But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it shall be clean.

54 This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy, and scall,

55 And for the leprosy of a garment, and of a house,

56 And for a rising, and for a scab, and for a bright spot:

57 To teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean: this is the law of leprosy.