(51) And he shall look on the plague.--If at the end of the week, when the priest examines it again, he finds that the distemper has spread, it undoubtedly indicates malignant leprosy. Here, again, the symptom of spreading is the same in the garment as in the human being. (See Leviticus 13:5-6; Leviticus 13:8, &c.) The leprous garment, like a human leper, makes everything and everybody unclean by contact with it, or by coming into the house where it remains.

13:47-59 The garment suspected to be tainted with leprosy was not to be burned immediately. If, upon search, it was found that there was a leprous spot, it must be burned, or at least that part of it. If it proved to be free, it must be washed, and then might be used. This also sets forth the great evil there is in sin. It not only defiles the sinner's conscience, but it brings a stain upon all he has and all that he does. And those who make their clothes servants to their pride and lust, may see them thereby tainted with leprosy. But the robes of righteousness never fret, nor are moth-eaten.And he shall look on the plague on the seventh day,.... To see whether there is any alteration in it in that space of time:

if the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin; the green and red spot be spread more and more in either of them, whether the colour remains the same or not, be changed, the green into red, or the red into green, yet if there was a spreading, it was a sign of leprosy. According to the Jewish canon (s), if the plague was green and spread red, or red and spread green, it was unclean; that is, as Bartenora (t) explains it, if it was red in the size of a bean, and at the end of the week the red had spread itself to green; or if at the beginning it was green like a bean, and at the end of the week had spread itself to the size of a shekel, and the root or spread of it was become red:

the plague is a fretting leprosy; according to Jarchi, a sharp and pricking one, like a thorn; which signification the word has in Ezekiel 28:24. Ben Gersom explains it, which brings a curse, corruption, and oldness into the thing in which it is; an old "irritated, exasperated" leprosy, as Bochart (u), from the use of the word in the Arabic tongue, translates it:

it is unclean; and the garment or thing in which it is.

(s) Misn. Negaim, c. 11. sect. 3, 4. (t) In ib. (u) Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 45. col. 493.