I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 13.

    I find it interesting that today’s passage seamlessly goes from discussing how to contain the spread of contagious skin diseases to how to contain the spread of mildew. It seems strange to us today. However, both would have been serious issues for a nomadic group of people as large as the children of Israel were. I think we rarely visualize how large the Israelite camp must have been. The count given of the number of men among them when they left the land of Egypt tells us that the camp consisted of somewhere between 1-1.5 million persons. This was a group of people large enough to be one of the top ten most populous cities in the United States, with no permanent structures, no running water, no sewage system. In addition to all of those people, they had flocks and herds. An outbreak of mildew in the camp could potentially be as devastating as an outbreak of disease since the mildew could easily destroy their clothing, their tents, and their food storage.