Leviticus 14:33-57

Evangelical Heritage Version

Purification of Contaminated Houses

³³ The Lord spoke these things to Moses and Aaron:

³⁴ When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I put a contamination of mold^[a] on a house in the land that you possess, ³⁵ the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, “There seems to me to be some sort of contamination in my house.” ³⁶ The priest shall order the house to be cleared before the priest comes to examine the contamination, so that nothing in the house will be declared unclean. After that the priest shall go in to examine the house. ³⁷ If, when he examines the contamination, the contamination on the walls of the house consists of depressions that are bright green or bright red and that appear deeper than the surface of the wall, ³⁸ the priest shall come out of the house to the entrance of the house and quarantine the house for seven days. ³⁹ On the seventh day the priest shall return to examine it. If the contamination has spread on the walls of the house, ⁴⁰ the priest shall order that they rip out the stones with the contamination on them and throw them into an unclean place outside the town. ⁴¹ The house must be scraped all around the inside, and they must dump the mud that is scraped off in an unclean place outside the town. ⁴² They are to take other stones and bring them to replace those stones and other mud to plaster the house.

⁴³ If the contamination breaks out again in the house after the stones have been ripped out and after the house has been scraped and replastered, ⁴⁴ the priest shall go in to examine it. If the contamination has spread in the house, it is a destructive^[b] mold in the house. It is unclean. ⁴⁵ The house shall be demolished and its stones and timber and all its mud are to be brought out to an unclean place outside the town. ⁴⁶ Whoever enters the house at any time during its quarantine will be unclean until sunset. ⁴⁷ Whoever sleeps in the house must wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house must wash his clothes.

⁴⁸ If, however, the priest enters and sees that the contamination has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, the priest shall declare the house clean, because the contamination has been cleansed. ⁴⁹ To purify the house, he shall take two birds, some cedar wood, some scarlet yarn, and some hyssop. ⁵⁰ He shall slaughter one of the birds in a clay pot over water from a flowing source. ⁵¹ He shall take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet yarn, and the live bird and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and in the water from a flowing source and sprinkle it on the house seven times. ⁵² When he has purified the house with the blood of the bird, the water from a flowing source, the live bird, the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet yarn, ⁵³ he shall release the live bird into the open country outside the town. In this way he shall make atonement for the house, so that it will be clean.

⁵⁴ This is the law for every infection of skin disease, for rash, ⁵⁵ for mold on clothing or a house, ⁵⁶ for discoloration and a scab and a shiny patch— ⁵⁷ to give instruction about when it is unclean and when it is clean.

This is the law concerning impure skin disease and contamination.