Parashat Tazria-Metzorah 5780

(33) The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: (34) When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, (35) the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.” (36) The priest shall order the house cleared before the priest enters to examine the plague, so that nothing in the house may become unclean; after that the priest shall enter to examine the house. (37) If, when he examines the plague, the plague in the walls of the house is found to consist of greenish or reddish streaks that appear to go deep into the wall, (38) the priest shall come out of the house to the entrance of the house, and close up the house for seven days. (39) On the seventh day the priest shall return. If he sees that the plague has spread on the walls of the house, (40) the priest shall order the stones with the plague in them to be pulled out and cast outside the city into an unclean place. (41) The house shall be scraped inside all around, and the coating that is scraped off shall be dumped outside the city in an unclean place. (42) They shall take other stones and replace those stones with them, and take other coating and plaster the house. (43) If the plague again breaks out in the house, after the stones have been pulled out and after the house has been scraped and replastered, (44) the priest shall come to examine: if the plague has spread in the house, it is a malignant eruption in the house; it is unclean. (45) The house shall be torn down—its stones and timber and all the coating on the house—and taken to an unclean place outside the city. (46) Whoever enters the house while it is closed up shall be unclean until evening. (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 comes and sees that the plague has not spread in the house after the house was replastered, the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the plague has healed. (49) To purge the house, he shall take two birds, cedar wood, crimson stuff, and hyssop. (50) He shall slaughter the one bird over fresh water in an earthen vessel. (51) He shall take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the crimson stuff, and the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and the fresh water, and sprinkle on the house seven times. (52) Having purged the house with the blood of the bird, the fresh water, the live bird, the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the crimson stuff, (53) he shall set the live bird free outside the city in the open country. Thus he shall make expiation for the house, and it shall be clean. (54) Such is the ritual for every eruptive affection—for scalls, (55) for an eruption on a cloth or a house, (56) for swellings, for rashes, or for discolorations— (57) to determine when they are unclean and when they are clean. Such is the ritual concerning eruptions.

ונתתי נגע צרעת [WHEN YOU COME TO THE LAND …]I WILL PUT THE PLAGUE OF THE LEPROSY — This was an announcement to them that these plagues would come upon them (Sifra, Metzora, Section 5 4; Horayot 10a), because the Amorites concealed treasures of gold in the walls of their houses during the whole 40 years the Israelites were in the wilderness in order that these might not possess them when they conquered Palestine, and in consequence of the plague they would pull down the house and discover them (Leviticus Rabbah 17:6).

When you come to the land of Canaan These laws apply only to the Holy Land, because of its great importance, insofar as the Holy Land contained the Temple, wherein resided the Glory.

כי תבאו אל ארץ כנען, “When you will come to the lad of Canaan;” the Torah did not write: כי תבואו in connection with the legislation governing the plague of Tzoraat. The reason is that the rules about tzoraat already applied when the Israelites were still wandering in the desert. When speaking about tzoraat afflicting houses it did write these words of introduction, as that plague only occurs in the land of Israel. [Besides they only had tents there no houses built of stone. Ed.] A different explanation: the reason why when a plague breaks out on a house it must be destroyed, is that the earth of the land of Israel is holy, and its earth does not gladly suffer ritual contamination.

ונתתי נגע צרעת, “and I put the plague of tzoraat on a house in the land of your inheritance. According to some commentators, reading the plain text, this line has to be understood in conjunction with Deuteronomy 12,2: אבד תאבדון את כל המקומות אשר עבדו שם הגוים, “you must destroy utterly every place where the gentiles have worshipped (idols).” How are we to know in which locations the Canaanites once worshipped idols? Answer: the plague that shows up on your house is an indication that this was a house which served such a purpose. It alerts us to the need to fulfill that commandment.

כנגע נראה לי בבית SOMETHING LIKE A PLAGUE HATH SHOWN ITSELF TO ME IN THE HOUSE — Even if he (the owner of the house) be a learned man and knows for sure that it is a plague he shall not decide the matter as a certainty saying, "a plague hath shown itself to me" but, “something like a plague hath shown itself to me" (Mishnah Negaim 12:5; Sifra, Metzora, Section 5 10).

אשר לו הבית, “to whom this house belongs, after the Israelites have conquered the land of Canaan. Everyone by then knows which house is his house. (Sifra)

. ובא אשר לו הבית, “and the one to whom the house belongs shall come, etc.” Our sages in Yuma 11 read out of these words that the house in question is under the exclusive control of one person who does not wish to lend furniture or utensils or invite guests to his house. If the house was struck with tzoraat this was in response to the tight-fisted nature of its owner. This is what is meant by “the one whose house it is must come to the priest and tell him that an affliction similar to tzoraat has infested the stones of his house.”

'בטרם יבא הכהן וגו‎ [THEY SHALL CLEAR THE HOUSE] BEFORE THE PRIEST COME etc. — For so long as the priest has not yet engaged himself with it no law of uncleanness is applicable there.

ולא יטמא כל אשר בבית THAT ALL THAT IS IN THE HOUSE BE NOT MADE UNCLEAN, for if he does not clear it out and the priest comes and examines the plague, it requires shutting up and all that is inside immediately becomes unclean. To what is it that the Torah has regard in ordering these precautions to be taken? If it had in mind wooden or metal vessels that need only be rinsed in order to restore them to cleanness, he can immerse them and they will become clean (and there is no need to remove them from the house for fear that they will become unclean if he does not do so), and if it has in mind food and liquids, he can eat them during the time of his uncleanness (in which case also he suffers no loss since he may consume them at a time when he himself happens to be unclean). Consequently it follows that the Torah must have regard only to earthen vessels for which there is no means of purification by immersion in a ritual bath (cf. Rashi on Leviticus 11:35) and which therefore will remain unusable except in connection with ordinary food (חולין) (Sifra, Metzora, Section 5 12).

while the kohen has not yet come He will proceed to quarantine the house, because its status is in doubt; but while he has not yet come, they may act on the benefit of the doubt.

. וצוה הכהן ופנו את הבית, “and the priest will issue instructions and they will clear out the house, etc.” The Torah is protective about the Israelites’ possessions, even for such inexpensive vessels as the ones made of earthenware. The vessels mentioned in our verse are such as the Torah speaks about protecting against becoming impure. Vessels of other materials can be purified by means of immersion in a ritual bath, the earhenware vessels cannot. If there is food and drink left over, the person may consume them during the days when he is ritually impure, so that he would not suffer an irreparable loss. It is clear therefore that what the Torah is concerned with here are only earthenware vessels.

וראה את הנגע והנה הנגע בקירות הבית, “and he sees that the plague has struck the walls of the house. The repetition of the word נגע in this verse led our Rabbis to understand that the minimum size of such a plague on a house is two גריסין, [surface of a large bean. Ed.]

. והנה הנגע בקירות הבית, “and here the affliction is on the walls of the house.” Up until this point the Torah had listed 10 different kinds of negaim, afflictions; six of them occur on the body of a person; they are שאת, ספחת, בהרת, שחין, נתק, מריטת הראש. Four additional afflictions infect things other than his body such as woolen garments, linen garments, leather garments or utensils, and the walls of a house.

You will find that the ten are arranged in the order in which we just mentioned them. There is a correlation here to the Ten Commandments. The message is that as long as the Israelites observe the Ten Commandments, i.e. the Torah which the Ten Commandments represent, they will not experience any of these ten afflictions. If they fail to honour the Torah and its precepts they will become victims of what the Torah has listed in the way of nega-im.

שקערורות, “depressed;” Our sages in Sifra Metzora 6,5 claim that the appearance of these afflictions in the walls was as if that area was depressed, recessed. The reason that the Torah in this paragraph switches to the plural although the word נגע is in the singular, is that the owner of the house as well as his neighbour must share in the cost of removing the infected stones. This is what the Sifra Metzora 4,2 had in mind when they said אוי לרשע ואוי לשכנו, “woe to the wicked and his neighbour.” As soon as talk of the demolition has been concluded, the Torah reverts to the singular such as with the words קציע, וטח, etc. This is meant to tell us that only the person whose house had displayed definitive symptoms of the nega has to bear the cost of the restoration. In other words, the labor has to be shared but the cost has to be borne by the owner of the house alone.

אל מקום טמא UNTO AN UNCLEAN PLACE — i. e. a place where clean things are not likely to be handled. Scripture teaches you that these stones make the place where they are deposited unclean for the time they are there.

and they will remove the stones The verb means “to remove”, as in “remove me from the violent man” [Psalms 140:2].

in a ritually impure place so that they will be clearly recognized as ritually impure, and no one will take them