Luke 5:12-14

2. The Lepers: Luke 5:12-14.

In Mark (Mark 1:40), as in Luke, the cure of the lepers took place during a preaching tour. Matthew connects this miracle with the Sermon on the Mount; it is as He comes down from the hill that Jesus meets and heals the leper (Luke 8:1 et seq.). This latter detail is so precise, that it is natural to give Matthew the preference here, rather than say, with Holtzmann, that Matthew wanted to fill up the return from the mountain to the city with it.

Leprosy was in every point of view a most frightful malady. 1 st. In its physical aspects it was a whitish pustule, eating away the flesh, attacking member after member, and at last eating away the very bones; it was attended with burning fever, sleeplessness, and nightmare, without scarcely the slightest hope of cure. Such were its physical characteristics; it was a living death. 2 d. In the social point of view, in consequence of the excessively contagious nature of his malady, the leper was separated from his family, and from intercourse with men, and had no other company than that of others as unhappy as himself. Lepers ordinarily lived in bands, at a certain distance from human habitations (2 Kings 7:3; Luke 17:12). Their food was deposited for them in convenient places. They went with their head uncovered, and their chin wrapped up; and on the approach of any persons whom they met, they had to announce themselves as lepers. 3 d. In the religious point of view, the leper was Levitically unclean, and consequently excommunicate. His malady was considered a direct chastisement from God. In the very rare case of a cure, he was only restored to the theocratic community on an official declaration of the priest, and after offering the sacrifice prescribed by the law (Leviticus 13:14, and the tract Negaïm in the Talmud).

The Greek expression is: And behold, a man! There is not a verb even. His approach was not seen; it has all the effect of an apparition. This dramatic form reproduces the impression made on those who witnessed the scene; in fact, it was only by a kind of surprise, and as it were by stealth, that a leper could have succeeded in approaching so near. The construction of the 12th verse (καὶ ἐγένετο... καὶ... καὶ) is Hebraistic, and proves an Aramaean document. There is nothing like it in the other Syn.; the eye-witness discovers himself in every feature of Luke's narrative. The diseased man was full of leprosy; that is to say, his countenance was lividly white, as is the case when the malady has reached an advanced stage. The unhappy man looks for Jesus in the crowd, and having discovered Him (ἰδών) he rushes towards Him; the moment he recognises Him, he is at His feet. Luke says, falling on his face; Mark, kneeling down; Matthew, he worshipped. Would not these variations in terms be puerile if this were a case of copying, or of a derivation from a common source? The dialogue is identical in the three narratives; it was expressed in the tradition in a fixed form, while the historical details were reproduced with greater freedom.

All three evangelists say cleanse instead of heal, on account of the notion of uncleanness attached to this malady. In the words, if Thou wilt, Thou canst, there is at once deep anguish and great faith. Other sick persons had been cured, this the leper knew, hence his faith; but he was probably the first man afflicted with his particular malady that succeeded in reaching Jesus and entreating His aid, hence his anxiety. The older rationalism used to explain this request in this way: “Thou canst, as Messiah, pronounce me clean. ” According to this explanation, the diseased person, already in the way of being cured naturally, simply asked Jesus to verify the cure and pronounce him clean, in order that he might be spared a costly and troublesome journey to Jerusalem. But for the term καθαρίζειν, to purify, comp. Luke 7:22; Matthew 10:8, where the simply declarative sense is impossible; and as to the context, Strauss has already shown that it comports just as little with this feeble meaning. After the words, be thou clean (pronounced pure), these, and he was cleansed (pronounced pure), would be nothing but absurd tautology.

Mark, who takes pleasure in portraying the feelings of Jesus, expresses the deep compassion with which He was moved by this spectacle (σπλαγχνισθείς). The three narratives concur in one detail, which must have deeply impressed those who saw it, and which, for this reason, was indelibly imprinted on the tradition: He put forth His hand, and touched him. Leprosy was so contagious, that this courageous act excited the liveliest emotion in the crowd. Throughout the whole course of His life, Jesus confronted the touch of our impure nature in a similar manner. His answer is identical in the three narratives; but the result is variously expressed. Matthew says: his leprosy was cleansed, regarding it from a ceremonial point of view. Luke simply says: the leprosy departed from him, looking at it from a human point of view. Mark combines the two forms. This is one of the passages on which they rely who make Mark a compiler from the other two; but if Mark was anxious to adhere so slavishly to the minutest expressions of his predecessors, to the point even of reproducing them without any object, how are we to explain the serious and important modifications which in so many other cases he introduced into their narratives, and the considerable omissions which he is continually making of the substance of what they relate? The fact is, that there were two sides to this cure, as to the malady itself, the physical and the religious; and Mark combines them, whilst the other two appear to take one or the other.

The prohibition which Jesus lays on the leper appears in Luke 5:14, in the form of indirect discourse; but in relating the injunction which follows it, Luke passes to the direct form. This form is peculiar to his narrative. Luke and Matthew omit the threat with which Jesus, according to Mark, accompanied this injunction (ἐμβριμησάμενος). What was the intention of Jesus? The cure having been public, He could not prevent the report of it from being spread abroad. This is true; but He wanted to do all in His power to diminish its fame, and not give a useless impetus to the popular excitement produced by the report of His miracles. Comp. Luke 8:56; Matthew 9:30; Matthew 12:16; Mark 1:34; Mark 3:12; Mark 5:43; Mark 7:36; Mark 8:26. All these passages forbid our seeking a particular cause for the prohibition He lays on the leper; such as a fear that the priests, having had notice of his cure before his reaching them, would refuse to acknowledge it; or that they would pronounce Jesus unclean for having touched him; or that the sick man would lose the serious impressions which he had received; or that he would allow himself to be deterred from the duty of offering the sacrifice.

Jesus said, “Show thyself,” because the person is here the convincing proof. In Luke we read, according as Moses...; in Matthew, the gift which Moses...; in Mark, the things which Moses...Most puerile changes, if they were designed!

What is the testimony contained in this sacrifice, and to whom is it addressed? According to Bleek, the word them would refer to the people, who are to be apprised that every one may henceforth renew his former relations with the leper. But is not the term testimony too weighty for this meaning? Gerlach refers the pronoun them to the priests: in order that thou, by thy cure, mayest be a witness to them of my almightiness; but according to the text, the testimony consists not in the cure being verified, but in the sacrifice being offered. The word them does indeed refer to the priests, who are all represented by the one who will verify the cure; but the testimony respects Jesus Himself, and His sentiments in regard to the law. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repels the charge already preferred against Him of despising the law (Matthew 5:17: “ Think not that I am come to destroy the law ”). It is to His respect, therefore, for the Mosaic legislation, that this offering will testify to the priests. During His earthly career, Jesus never dispensed His people from the obligation to obey the prescriptions of the law; and it is an error to regard Him as having, under certain circumstances, set aside the law of the Sabbath as far as He Himself was concerned. He only transgressed the arbitrary enactments with which Pharisaism had surrounded it.

We see by these remarkable words that Jesus had already become an object of suspicion and serious charges at Jerusalem. This state of things is explained by the narrative of the fourth Gospel, where, from the 2d chapter, we see Jesus exposed to the animosity of the dominant party, and accords to John 4:1. He is even obliged to leave Judaea in order that their unfavourable impressions may not be aggravated before the time. In chap. 5, which describes a fresh visit to Jerusalem (for the feast of Purim), the conflict thus prepared breaks forth with violence, and Jesus is obliged to testify solemnly His respect for this Moses, who will be the Jews' accuser, and not His (John 5:45-47). This is just the state of things with which the passage we are explaining agrees, as well as all the facts which are the sequel of it. Notwithstanding apparent discrepancies between the Syn. and John, a substantial similarity prevails between them, which proves that both forms of narrative rest on a basis of historic reality.

The leper, according to Mark, did not obey the injunction of Jesus; and this disobedience served to increase that concourse of sick persons which Jesus endeavoured to lessen.

This cure is a difficulty for Keim. A purely moral influence may calm a fever (Luke 4:39), or restore a frenzied man to his senses (Luke 4:31 et seq.); but it cannot purify vitiated blood, and cleanse a body covered with pustules. Keim here resorts to what is substantially the explanation of Paulus. The leper already cured simply desired to be pronounced clean by authorized lips, that he might not have to go to Jerusalem. It must be acknowledged, on this view of the matter, that the three narratives (Matthew as well as Luke and Mark, whatever Keim may say about it) are completely falsified by the legend. Then how came it to enter into the mind of this man to substitute Jesus for a priest? How could Jesus have accepted such an office? Having accepted it, why should He have sent the afflicted man to Jerusalem? Further, for what reason did He impose silence upon him, and enforce it with threats? And what could the man have had to publish abroad, of sufficient importance to attract the crowd of people described Mark 1:45 ?

Holtzmann (p. 432) concludes, from the words ἐξέβαλεν and ἐξελθών, literally, He cast him out, and having gone forth (Mark 1:43; Mark 1:45), that according to Mark this cure took place in a house, which agrees very well with the leper being prohibited from making it known; and that consequently the other two Syn. are in error in making it take place in public,

Luke in a city, Matthew on the road from the mountain to Capernaum (Luke 8:1). He draws great exegetical inferences from this. But when it is said in Mark (Mark 1:12) that the Spirit drove out (ἐκβάλλει) Jesus into the wilderness, does this mean out of a house? And as to the verb ἐξέρχεσθαι, is it not frequently used in a broad sense: to go out of the midst of that in which one happens to be (here: the circle formed around Jesus)? Comp. Mark 6:34 (Matthew 14:14), Luke 6:12; John 1:44, etc. A leper would hardly have been able to make his way into a house. His taking them by surprise in the way he did could scarcely have happened except in the open country; and, as we have seen, the prohibition of Jesus can easily be explained, taking this view of the incident. The critical consequences of Holtzmann, therefore, have no substantial basis.