Nehar Deah

Metzora

Four Stories of Leprosy

There are four stories in the Bible that tell of a person being struck with leprosy (Translators note: the common translation of the Biblical term “tzara’at” as leprosy has been used here, but there is some doubt as to whether it bears any similarity to what we today call leprosy) and three of them deal with their healing too. Two of the stories deal with the father of all prophets, Moses (Shemot 4:6-7; Bamidbar 12:1-16), the third deals with another prophet, Elisha (Kings II 5), and the fourth story, which speaks only of contracting leprosy, is the story of the illness of King Uziyahu (Chronicles II 26:16-21).

The longest and most extensive of these is the story of the prophet Elisha, who cures Na’aman, the military leader to the Aramean king, of his leprosy (Kings II 5). At the end of this story, Na’aman’s leprosy attaches itself to Geichazi, Elisha’s servant, who displeases his master and is punished and goes away from him “covered in leprosy like snow (Verse 27).

The story of Na’aman’s leprosy contains a message: it comes to teach us that all are subject to God and take their strength from Him - both military strength, even that of the army of an enemy, and also the ability to perform miracles. The viewpoint that miracles are the handiwork of the prophet is unfounded. The prophet is only a man of God, who is His messenger and does His will. Even when God’s name is not invoked by him when performing the miracles, the miracle is still God’s miracle and praise is fitting to Him.

The heroes of this story reach this conclusion: Na’aman the Aramean declares God’s greatness, as a result of his being healed, “'Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel” (verse 15), and the prophet vows on God’s name and declares that he stands before God (verse 16) and even refuses to accept payment, in order to teach that he is not the one who created the miracle. Before the miracle of the curing of the leprosy, they were both vain men: Elisha announced “let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel” (verse 8), note: “prophet in Israel” and not “God in Israel”! While Na’aman presents himself at the door of Elisha’s home in all his strength and glory, “with his horses and chariots” (verse 9) and expects that Elisha will come out to him in order to heal him. The person that spoils the joy in the awareness that all are subject to God is Geichazi. The greedy Geichazi is upset that his master sends Na’aman away without partaking of his wealth and he lies to both Na’aman and Elisha when he goes out to take bounty from Na’aman’s wealth. The punishment of Geichazi, who did not recognize his master’s authority, came swiftly: he and his descendants are struck by leprosy (verse 27).

The keyword in the story, which emphasizes that greatness is something relative and that everything eventually is subject to God, is the word “before”. Na’aman is a great man “before his masters” (verse 1); a young girl from the land of Israel serves “before Na’aman’s wife” (verse 2) and tells her of the greatness of Elisha; Na’aman needs, according to the young girl, to appear “before the prophet who is in Samaria” (verse 3) in order that he heal him. Only after he has been healed does Na’aman come to Elisha “and he stood before him” (verse 15) and then the prophet also refers to his subordination “before” God (verse 16). Geichazi, whose subordination to his master was not genuine, does not stand before him but rather “towards” (“and he stood towards his master”, verse 25) and therefore he was punished with leprosy and went out “from before him covered with leprosy like snow” (verse 27).

Leprosy is therefore the disease and punishment of those who do not recognize the authority of their superiors. This idea appears in a different form in the rest of the stories of leprosy mentioned above.

The incident of leprosy on Moses’ hand and its healing (Shemot 4:6-7) is the second sign given to Moses who fears that the nation will not recognize him as the messenger of God (verse 1). The double sign - the leprosy and its cure - ensure the nations faith in the messenger: “And it will be that if they do not believe you and do not heed to the voice of the first sign, and they will heed the voice of the latter sign” (verse 8).

This story therefore also deals with issues of subordination and authority, but here, unlike in the story of Na’aman, the messenger-prophet knows his place in the hierarchy and fears only that the nation will not understand it and will not believe that he acts in God’s name. For this reason God gives a sign to his messenger and in his messenger. God is the operator, while the messenger is completely passive and symbolizes with his body, the authority of his sender. This story too has two stages: contracting leprosy and being healed of it, but here it is opposite to the story of Elisha, Na’aman and Geichazi, and here the two actions happen to the same subject - Moses. The story of the sign is connected to the story of Na’aman in terms of a number of phrases: “and behold his hand was covered with leprosy like snow” (Shemot 4:6) - “went out from before him covered with leprosy like snow” (Kings II 5:27); “and behold it had returned to be as his [other] flesh” (Shemot 4:7) - “and it shall return to you as your [other] flesh” (Kings II 5:10), “and his flesh returned to be like the flesh of a young boy” (ibid, verse 14).

The story in Bamidbar 12 also deals with the issue of prophetic authority. Miriam and Aaron question their subordination to Moses: “And they said: 'Has God indeed spoken only with Moses? Has He not also spoken with us?'” (verse 2). Miriam is punished in the same way as Geichazi, but is healed through the intervention of the intermediary, Moses, who prays for her. This story also has two stages, contracting leprosy and being healed of it. Miriam does not question the authority of God, but rather that of Moses and God punishes her in order to bring her to recognize her subordination to her brother. It is specifically the healing, a revealing of kindness, that is the fitting time for Moses’ intervention; by this he proves to Miriam that only he (and not him or Aaron) can pray to God on her behalf.

This story also contains expressions similar to those appearing in the story of Na’aman: “And behold Miriam was covered with leprosy like snow” (verse 10), “and after that she shall be gathered” (verse 14), “until Miriam is gathered” (verse 15) - “and he stretched out his hand to the place and the leper was gathered” (Kings II 5:12).

In the last story in the series, the story of Uziyahu, only the stage of contracting leprosy appears. The redactor of the book of Chronicles wanted an explanation for the fact that it is written in the book of Kings that Uziyahu was a leper (Kings II 15:5), and therefore created the tale of Uziyahu who does not recognize the limits of the authority of and subordination to the priesthood and to God with respect to the holy worship service: “But when he was strong, his heart was haughty to do corruptly, and he sinned against the Lord his God and he went into the temple of God to offer incense” (verse 16). The priests put him in his place in terms of what should be his correct subordination: “It is not for you Uziyahu to offer incense to God, but only the priests sons of Aaron” (verse 18), and when the king does not accepted their view of things, he is struck with leprosy “before the priests in the house of God” (verse 19).

This story, which characterizes the viewpoint of the redactor of Chronicles, diverts the focus of honor from the authority of the prophets to the authority of the priests. The story of Uziyahu makes use of the story of Miriam, which also takes place on sacred ground, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. In addition: there is a similarity the text “and Azariyah the priest, head of all the priests, turned to Uziyahu and behold, he had leprosy on his forehead” (Chronicles II 26:20), and it is written as a result of what is told of Miriam: “and Aaron turned to Miriam and behold she had leprosy” (Bamidbar 12:10).

Even before he is struck with leprosy, the priests instructed Uziyahu “go out from the temple” (verse 18), and after he is struck with leprosy it is written “and he also made haste to go out” (verse 20), a fact that is reminiscent of Geichazi standing before Elisha: “and he went out from before him covered in leprosy like snow” (Kings II 5:27).

From what is written above, it seems therefore that all the stories of leprosy deal with a lack of recognition of authority, both prophetic authority and priestly authority, and a person that does not learn their lesson is not healed of the leprosy, like Uziyahu who has leprosy until he dies and Geichazi whose punishment is for all generations.

Professor Yair Zacobitz
Bible Department

Characters - Geichazi according to the Sages

Among the Biblical characters who were struck with leprosy, we also find Geichazi, the servant of the prophet Elisha. This insignificant character appears in three stories within the cycle of the stories of Elisha, amongst which is the story of the healing of Na’aman, the chief of the Aramean army, of his leprosy, by immersion in the Jordan. In the second half of the story we are told of how Geichazi wishes to deceptively gain reward for this healing when he sees that his master, Elisha, refuses to accept recompense for the miracle that happened. Geichazi bypasses Elisha’s authority and tries through deception to take payment from Na’aman for the healing. After the incident, Geichazi tries to evade the issue and lies to his master, “your servant did not go there and there” (verse 25), but Elisha uncovers his crime and punishes him: “…and Na’aman’s leprosy will cleave to you and your seed forever and he went out from before him covered in leprosy like snow.”

In the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 107b) there appears a tradition which criticizes the attitude of Elisha towards his servant (this version was censored in printings and was completed from manuscripts of the Talmud): “Our teachers taught, let it always be that the left pushes away and the right draws near, unlike Elisha who pushed Geichazi away with both hands and not like Yehoshua, son of Parchiya, who pushed Jesus Christ away with both hands”. This tradition speaks in praise of tolerance and in censure of a strict approach towards a rebellious student, represented here by the prophet Elisha and by the sage Yehoshua, son of Parchiya, and it wishes to caution against the undesirable results that the strict approach is likely to cause. Geichazi is mentioned here as the pupil of Elisha and he is compared to a more famous pupil who transgressed: Jesus Christ. (For the sake of our discussion, we will ignore the difficulty in connecting between Rabbi Yehoshua, son of Parchiya, a sage from the second century, and Jesus.)

This is not the only source that views Geichazi as a student of the sages, who strayed from the path of righteousness. The Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 10:2 [29b]), tells: “Geichazi was a great man in Torah… at the same time as Elisha sat learning, Geichazi would sit at his entrance and students would see him and say: Geichazi does not enter, how can we enter?! And Elishas’s learning took place but no one benefited from it. Since [Geichazi] went beyond what was written? ‘The sons of the prophets said to Elisha, behold this place where we sit there before you, is too narrow’ (Kings II 6:1), the place could not contain the many students that were there”. According to this Midrash, Geichazi kept students away from the study hall of Elisha and caused the loss of Torah teachings. This is learned out from the proximity of Elisha’s cursing of Geichazi and a complaint by the sons of the prophets that the place is too small for them. The Sages connect the two incidents by the story brought above: why was the place suddenly too small? It is likely that Geichazi’s expulsion must have lead to this.

It seems that there are two main aims in presenting Geichazi as a “great man in Torah”: the one - his closeness to the world of the sages. The Midrashim frequently describe the biblical characters as involved in Torah and keeping the commandments, and therefore we find our forefather Jacob learning in the study hall of Shem and Eiver and King David as the head of court of law and dealing with the laws of purity and impurity. The second aim - to emphasize the sin of Geichazi and to justify the severity of his punishment. If we were speaking of some reckless youth - it would not have been such an issue, but when the sinner is a great man in Torah there is need to be very exacting in dealing with him.

Hebrew Literature - The Four Lepers and the Poetess Rachel

The poetess Rachel (full name: Rachel Blaushtein-Sela) was born in Russia in 1890 and at age of 15 she began to write poems in Russian. In 1909 she came to Israel and went to live in Rehovot and after a time she joined a training farm for young girls at the Kinneret. In 1913 she traveled to France to learn agriculture and painting, but the First World War prevented her from returning to Israel at the conclusion of her studies. She traveled to Russia where she looked after the children of Jewish refugees. After the war she returned to Israel and settled on Degania, where she discovered that she had contracted tuberculosis. Because of this she was forced to leave the kibbutz and she spent her remaining days in Jerusalem, Safed and Petach Tikva. During her last six years she lived in Tel Aviv, where she wrote most of her poetry. Rachel died on 29 Nisan 5691 (16/4/1931) and was buried, by her own request, in the cemetery at the Kinneret.

Rachel was the first of the Modernists in Hebrew poetry and one of the first to write in Sephardic pronunciation. Her poems are short and precise and her language is flowing and melodious and therefore very popular with her readers and many of them have been put to music and are played to this day (“Will you hear my voice”, “I have not sung to you, my land” and other). Rachel’s language was influenced by the revival of Hebrew and by biblical language and she even dealt with biblical characters in a few of her poems.

One of her poems is connected directly to the weekly Torah portion of Metzora (“the leper”) and especially to its haphtarah (“additional reading”, the story of the siege of Samaria and the role played by the four lepers). The words of the poem:

For a long while the dreadful enemy
Brought Samaria to siege;
Four lepers to her brought tidings.
To her brought the tidings of freedom.

A Samaria under siege - the entire land,
The famine is too hard to bear.
But I will not want news of freedom,
If it comes from the mouth of a leper.

The pure will bring news and the pure will redeem,
And if his hand won’t be there to redeem -
Then I will choose to die from the suffering of the siege
On the eve of the day of the great tidings.

This poem (which was probably written in 1926 or 1927) deals, at a deeper level, with the connection between the means and the end and according to the opinion of the narrator of the poem, the ends do not always justify the means; there are means that are so repulsive and not fitting that it is preferable to choose to die from the suffering of the siege rather than accept the tidings of redemption from one who is not worthy to do so. It is not clear if Rachel was referring to specific events in her times or whether she just wanted to use a well known biblical story to bring a timeless message: “But I will not want news of freedom, if it comes from the mouth of a leper; The pure will bring news and the pure will redeem…”