Tzaraath - Cause and Treatment - After Cure

After Cure

When the priest had certified that tzaraath had been cured, the biblical text requires that the formerly infected person undergo a number of ritual events, some occurring straight away, and some occurring a week later. According to critical scholars, these are really two independent rituals spliced together, with the first group being the ritual that was originally part of the regulations for tzaraath of skin, and the other group being a later attempt at replacing the first group of rituals, so that the regulations fitted better with the sacrifice-centric view of the Aaronid priesthood. The biblical text states that a ritual, almost identical to the first group of rituals for skin-tzaraath, also had to be carried out for houses that had been cured of infections from tzaraath; however, there is no further ritual for houses that could parallel the second group of rituals for skin-tzaraath.

The first group of requirements are that the formerly infected person kills a (ritually pure) bird over fresh water, in a clay pot, and dips another living bird, together with cedar wood, scarlet yarn, and ezov, into the blood; this combination was used to sprinkle the formerly infected person seven times with the blood. Once the surviving bird was released over open fields, and the formerly infected person had shaved off all their hair, and bathed themselves and their clothes in water, they were counted as ritually pure. According to biblical scholars, this ritual is primarily an example of sympathetic magic, with the running water and living bird being symbolic representations of ritual impurity going away; killing animals over running water was a widespread ancient custom. The cedar and ezob have more practical applications, with cedarwood having medicinal properties, and ezob being a good implement to use for sprinkling.

In the second group of requirements, having completed the first group, the formerly infected person is required to avoid their own home for a week (although they may mix with other people), after which they must shave off absolutely all of their hair, including their eyebrows, and then wash themselves. Having done this, the formerly infected individual was required to make a standard whole offering, a standard sin offering (to excuse the profanity of having had tzaraath), and a guilt offering (to apologise for the cause of the tzaraath); if people are too poor to afford that, the bible allows the standard alternative set of sacrificial victims to be used instead.

Unlike other guilt offerings, the priest was required to put some of the blood from the sacrifice onto the formerly infected person's right ear lobe, right thumb, and right big toe, then some of the oil for the sacrifice had to be poured into the priest's left palm, and applied with the priest's right forefinger onto to the formerly infected person's right ear lobe, right thumb, and right big toe, and then the rest of the oil from the priest's palm was to be poured onto the formerly infected person's head; critical scholars regard the Priestly Code, of which the tzaraath regulations are a part, to have been written in the early 7th century, and it is in this context that these additional rules have significance. By that era, non-priests were not allowed to pass beyond a certain gateway (the gate of Nicanor) in the complex at the Temple in Jerusalem, while the blood from sacrifices couldn't pass outside, thus for a person to be touched by the blood, they had to lean through the gateway without setting foot on the other side; the right ear, thumb, and toe, were symbolically the parts of the body that achieve this.