Mark 1:40-45 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying to him, If you will, you can make me clean.… As to this disease observe: heat, dryness, and dust, predispose to diseases of the skin everywhere, and all these causes are especially operative in Syria. Insufficient food assists their action; and boils and sores are apt to fester and poison the system. Leprosy is a disease found over a large tract of the world's surface; it is found all round the shores of the Mediterranean, from Syria to Spain, in a virulent form, and in North and South Africa. It was carried to various countries in Europe by those who returned from the crusades, and became prevalent even in England, in the times when our forefathers had no butcher meat in winter but what was salted, and little vegetable diet with it. In a form less virulent than in Palestine, it exists in Norway, where the government supports several hospitals for lepers, and seeks to prevent the spread of the disease by requiring all afflicted with it to live — unmarried — in one or other of these. Probably, salt fish in Norway forms the too exclusive food of the poor, as it also probably did in Palestine in the time of Christ. Mrs. Brassey found it in the islands of the Pacific. It is so common in India that when Lord Lawrence took formal possession of Oude, he made the people promise not to burn their widows nor slay their children (the girls), nor bury alive their lepers. It was a loathsome disease, eating away the joints, enfeebling the strength, producing diseases of the lungs, almost always fatal, though taking years to kill. It was the one disease which the Mosaic law treated as unclean; perhaps, as being the chief disease, God wished to indicate that all outward misery had originally its root in sin. He that was afflicted with it had to live apart from his fellows, and to cry out "unclean" when any came near him; often, therefore, could do no work, but had to live on charity. He was not permitted to enter a synagogue unless a part were specially railed off for him, and then he must be the first to enter and the last to quit the place. It was as fatal as consumption is with us; much more painful; loathsome as well, infecting the spirits with melancholy, and cutting the sufferer off from tender sympathies and ministries when he most needed them. (R. Glover.) Parallel Verses KJV: And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. |
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