What is the meaning of Leviticus 14:46? Anyone who enters the house • “Anyone” shows that the law applies to every person, not only the homeowner or priest (cf. Leviticus 17:12; 18:26). • Responsibility is individual. Stepping over the threshold is a choice that carries consequences, echoing Joshua 24:15—choose whom you will serve. • The setting is a house with suspected defiling mold (Leviticus 14:33-45). God guards His people from hidden corruption much the way He bars approach to holy things unless purified (Numbers 3:10). • The picture points ahead to the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). Entering with known impurity today—sin unconfessed—still disrupts fellowship. During any of the days that it is closed up • The priest has shut the house for a full seven-day inspection (Leviticus 14:38). Until he declares it clean, the danger remains. • Time does not in itself cleanse; only God-given means do. Miriam’s seven-day quarantine (Numbers 12:15) illustrates the same principle. • Repeated days stress vigilance. Sin, like mold, can spread silently (Galatians 5:9). • God’s people wait on His timing. The house may be reopened only when He says so, paralleling Psalm 27:14—“Wait for the LORD.” Will be unclean until evening • Contact with defilement brings immediate but temporary impurity, just as touching certain animals does (Leviticus 11:24-25). • Evening marks the start of a new day (Genesis 1:5). The person’s impurity ends then, after necessary washing (Leviticus 15:5). • The requirement underscores God’s holiness: uncleanness can’t linger overnight in His camp (Deuteronomy 23:14). • It anticipates the greater cleansing secured by Christ. “The blood of Christ … will cleanse our conscience” (Hebrews 9:13-14). We still need daily washing of feet, not entire bodies (John 13:10). summary Leviticus 14:46 teaches that any person, at any time during the priest-ordered quarantine of a mold-infected house, becomes ceremonially unclean until evening by simply walking inside. Literally, the statute protected Israel from physical and ritual contamination. Spiritually, it reminds believers that contact with what God calls defiling always affects us, that vigilance is required for as long as corruption remains present, and that cleansing—ultimately fulfilled in Christ—restores fellowship when the day is done. |
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