about him the emblems of death, the rent garments; he
was to keep his head bare and his lip covered, as was the custom with
those who were in communion with the dead. When the Crusaders brought
the leprosy from the East, it was usual to clothe the leper in a shroud,
and to say for him the masses for the dead.... In all ages this
indescribably horrible malady has been considered incurable. The Jews
believed that it was inflicted by Jehovah directly, as a punishment for
some extraordinary perversity or some transcendent act of sinfulness,
and that only God could heal it. When Naaman was cured, and his flesh
came back like that of a little child, he said, 'Now I know that there
is no God in all the earth but in Israel,' (2 Kings 5:14, 15.)"

The fact that leprosy is not ordinarily communicable by mere outward
contact is accentuated by Trench, _Notes on the Miracles_, pp. 165-168,
and the isolation of lepers required by the Mosaic law is regarded by
him as an intended object lesson and figure to illustrate spiritual
uncleanness. He says: "I refer to the mistaken assumption that leprosy
was catching from one person to another; and that the lepers were so
carefully secluded from their fellowmen lest they might communicate the
disease to others, as in like manner that the torn garment, the covered
lip, the cry, 'Unclean, unclean' (Lev. 13:45) were warnings to all that
they should keep aloof, lest unawares touching a leper, or drawing unto
too great a nearness, they should become partakers of this disease. So
far from any danger of the kind existing, nearly all who have looked
closest into the matter agree that the sickness was incommunicable by
ordinary contact from one person to another. A leper might transmit it
to his children, or the mother of a leper's children might take it from
him; but it was by no ordinary contact communicable from one person to
another. All the notices in the Old Testament, as well as in other
Jewish books, confirm the statement that we have here something very
much higher than a mere sanitary regulation. Thus, when the law of Moses
was not observed, no such exclusion necessarily found place; Naaman the
leper commanded the armies of Syria (2 Kings 5:1); Gehazi, with his
leprosy that never should be cleansed, (2 Kings 5:27) talked familiarly
with the king of apostate Israel (2 Kings 8:5).... How, moreover, should
the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creeping infection,
have ever themselves