(א) וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ (ב) דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר אִשָּׁה֙ כִּ֣י תַזְרִ֔יעַ וְיָלְדָ֖ה זָכָ֑ר וְטָֽמְאָה֙ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֔ים כִּימֵ֛י נִדַּ֥ת דְּוֺתָ֖הּ תִּטְמָֽא׃ (ג) וּבַיּ֖וֹם הַשְּׁמִינִ֑י יִמּ֖וֹל בְּשַׂ֥ר עָרְלָתֽוֹ׃ (ד) וּשְׁלֹשִׁ֥ים יוֹם֙ וּשְׁלֹ֣שֶׁת יָמִ֔ים תֵּשֵׁ֖ב בִּדְמֵ֣י טָהֳרָ֑ה בְּכָל־קֹ֣דֶשׁ לֹֽא־תִגָּ֗ע וְאֶל־הַמִּקְדָּשׁ֙ לֹ֣א תָבֹ֔א עַד־מְלֹ֖את יְמֵ֥י טָהֳרָֽהּ׃ (ה) וְאִם־נְקֵבָ֣ה תֵלֵ֔ד וְטָמְאָ֥ה שְׁבֻעַ֖יִם כְּנִדָּתָ֑הּ וְשִׁשִּׁ֥ים יוֹם֙ וְשֵׁ֣שֶׁת יָמִ֔ים תֵּשֵׁ֖ב עַל־דְּמֵ֥י טָהֳרָֽה׃
Translator Everett Fox: This chapter designates a new mother as tamei, most likely due to her intimate contact with the life/death boundary during childbirth. Her separation from and reintegration into the community echo similar customs in many societies; as often happens with life-cycle events, ritual here reflects what is happening psychologically. The doubling of the separation period when it is a girl that is born is best explained by the concept that a girl potentially doubles the "life-leak" that has taken place, since she will one day be a childbearing woman who will herself confront the life-death continuum.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: Unclean is the wrong word [for tamei]. It implies dirty, or moral badness. A better translation for tamei / taharah would be “everyday state”/“elevated state”. Back in the day, most people were in an everyday state most of the time. The elevated state was what you needed to go to the Temple in Jerusalem (or mishkan/Tabernacle).
Things that could make you "everyday state" generally had to do with death or not-life. Disease. Contact with a dead body. Missed babymaking opportunity (menses and seminal emission, also early miscarriage). How you got from everyday to elevated depended on the thing. Sometimes time did the job. (Eg menstruation; ritual bath for that came later). Sometimes ritual washing. With contact with the dead, though, there was a whole ritual with an unblemished red heifer involved.
We are all tamei now. We’re all in the everyday state. Nobody’s done the red heifer thing for a couple thousand years. And there’s no Temple to go to so it doesn’t matter. The reason we needed to become tahor/elevated state hasn’t existed since the Romans destroyed [the Temple] in 70 CE.
(2) When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of his body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests. (3) The priest shall examine the affection on the skin of his body... (5) On the seventh day the priest shall examine him, and if the affection has remained unchanged in color and the disease has not spread on the skin, the priest shall isolate him for another seven days. (6) On the seventh day the priest shall examine him again: if the affection has faded and has not spread on the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean. It is a rash; he shall wash his clothes, and he shall be clean.
Translator Robert Alter: Throughout this long section on dermatological disorders, the precise identification of disease and even symptoms remains uncertain, and the approximations afforded by translation are chiefly guided by etymology. The fact of the matter is that the ancients perceived and described diseases and their symptoms differently than does modern Western medicine, and some conditions that they understood to be a single malady may actually have been a variety of diseases, not all of them intrinsically related. Scholarly attempts to equate the various conditions reported here with specific dermatological disorders have had only limited success... Although older English translations represent the Hebrew tsara'at as "leprosy," modern scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting this identification. The symptoms do not correspond, and there is scant evidence that leprosy was present in the Near East before the Hellenistic period. No positive identification with a disease known to modern medicine has been made.
(47) When an eruptive affection occurs in a cloth of wool or linen fabric, (48) in the warp or in the woof of the linen or the wool, or in a skin or in anything made of skin; (49) if the affection in the cloth or the skin, in the warp or the woof, or in any article of skin, is streaky green or red, it is an eruptive affection. It shall be shown to the priest.
AND WHEN THE PLAGUE OF LEPROSY IS IN A GARMENT. This is not in the natural order of things, nor does it ever happen in the world [outside Israel], and similarly leprosy of houses140 But when Israel is wholly devoted to G-d, then His spirit is upon them always, to maintain their bodies, clothes and houses in a good appearance. Thus as soon as one of them commits a sin or transgression, a deformity appears in his flesh, or on his garment, or in his house, revealing that G-d has turned aside from him. It is for this reason that Scripture states, And I shall put the plague of leprosy in a house of the Land of your possession,141(14:34), meaning that it is G-d’s punishment upon that house. Thus [the law of leprosy of houses] applies only in the Land of Israel.
Translator Robert Alter: "an eruptive affection." The Hebrew is nega' tsara'at. Here the disparity between ancient understanding and modern categories is most striking. This is the same term for the condition that, when it appears on a human body, has been rendered in my translation as "skin blanch." That translation obviously does not work for fabrics and leather, and the law seems to have in mind some sort of mold or mildew, which, however, is thought to exhibit the same pathology as the dermatological condition, perhaps because of a sickly whiteness manifested in both.
Abigail Pogrebin on the podcast Parsha in Progress, episode 41: The directives are so particular, they're so specific, and that's what we're experiencing right now every day. "This is how to wash your hands thoroughly. This is how to separate and sterilize your groceries. This is how long the virus lives on a box or on cardboard." And also this is a reminder, whether or not our ancestors knew what was coming, that in a certain way, it never dies: the idea of plagues, of pandemics, of infection, of someone being a leper or diseased. It's the minutiae of the sterilization: "In order to come back, here are the things you need to do."
Translator Robert Alter: The vagueness of the phrasing reflects the uncertainty of the home owner's diagnosis. We have already observed the peculiar extrapolation from scaly skin disease to blight or mildew in fabrics. Now the owner of the house contemplates what is evidently some sort of mold or mildew in the walls of his house and wonders whether it exhibits a certain similarity to the skin disease called tsara'at.