⁹ Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam as you were coming from Egypt.

¹⁰ As the cloud moved from above the Tabernacle, there stood Miriam, her skin as white as snow from leprosy.^[a] When Aaron saw what had happened to her, ¹¹ he cried out to Moses, “Oh, my master! Please don’t punish us for this sin we have so foolishly committed. ¹² Don’t let her be like a stillborn baby, already decayed at birth.”

¹³ So Moses cried out to the Lord, “O God, I beg you, please heal her!”

¹⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had done nothing more than spit in her face, wouldn’t she be defiled for seven days? So keep her outside the camp for seven days, and after that she may be accepted back.”

¹⁵ So Miriam was kept outside the camp for seven days, and the people waited until she was brought back before they traveled again.

¹¹ These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.

⁶ These things happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did,

²⁰ When Azariah the high priest and all the other priests saw the leprosy, they rushed him out. And the king himself was eager to get out because the Lord had struck him. ²¹ So King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in isolation in a separate house, for he was excluded from the Temple of the Lord. His son Jotham was put in charge of the royal palace, and he governed the people of the land.

Outcasts Visit the Enemy Camp

³ Now there were four men with leprosy^[a] sitting at the entrance of the city gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other.

² “Command the people of Israel to remove from the camp anyone who has a skin disease^[a] or a discharge, or who has become ceremonially unclean by touching a dead person.

³² Remember what happened to Lot’s wife!