Mark Tabata’s Weekday Devotionals:
Monday June 1 2026
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Leviticus 13:45 (Webster)-And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.
During the time that the Pentateuch was written, infectious diseases were a very real danger and threat. Moses was himself trained in all the knowledge and wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22), yet the medical wisdom of the Egyptians at that time was not as reliable and expansive as ours today.
To cure pinkeye apply the urine of a faithful wife. “This prescription comes from the famous Ebers Papyrus, a medical book from 1500 B.C. Of course this treatment was useless and dangerous. But if the pinkeye did not get better fast, the poor woman probably had to explain herself. The Ebers Papyrus gives us a picture of medicine in ancient Egypt, that day’s most advanced civilization. To cure baldness, doctors applied “a mixture of six fats… [from] the horse, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cat, the snake, and the [wild goat].” 1 All that grease grew few hairs, but at least it shined the hairless dome. The Ebers Papyrus lists hundreds of prescriptions, with an amazing array of ingredients: statue dust, beetle shells, mouse tails, cat hair, pig eyes, dog toes, breast milk, human semen, eel eyes, and goose guts. The best one can say about these medications is that at least they were “100 percent natural.” Good and Laudable Pus To splinters, the ancient Egyptian doctors applied a salve of worm blood and donkey dung. Since dung is loaded with tetanus spores, a simple splinter often resulted in a gruesome death from lockjaw. Until the late 1800s, however, most doctors thought pus promoted healing. Thus doctors infected wounds to get them to produce pus. They agreed with the Ebers Papyrus: “It is good for a wound to rot a little…. Therefore, put something in the wound that will [make it produce pus].” 2 A modern doctor comments on the Ebers Papyrus: [This is] the first known statement of the dirtiest, messiest, most pernicious, and most persistent mistake in the history of surgery: getting the badness out of a wound…. It has been among the catchiest concepts in the history of medicine…. Rivers of pus flowed for another 3,500 years, and the dreadful doctrine of good and laudable pus… has only recently faded. 3 In the ancient world, well-meaning doctors killed millions by deliberately infecting their wounds. (S. I. MD McMillen, David E. MD Stern, None of These Diseases: The Bible’s Health Secrets for the 21st Century, 202-221 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: Revell)
When we compare the wisdom that Moses displays (especially throughout the Book of Leviticus), we see powerful evidence that the writers of the Bible had access to supernatural medical and scientific knowledge which shows their wisdom came from Divine inspiration. Later in their book, McMillen and Stern provide other examples of this.
Was Moses “inevitably a child of his time”? Did he provide the Hebrews with a spell to stop epidemics? Read his ancient prescription: “As long as he has leprosy… he must live alone outside the camp” (Lev. 13: 46). There was not even a trace of superstition. This ancient order clearly states the modern concept of quarantine. One historian notes, “The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13 may be regarded as the first model of a sanitary legislation.” 5 Indeed, the biblical method makes a radical break from all ancient concepts of disease. No superstition. No leprosy demons. No animal dung salve. Maybe we should seriously consider Moses’ claim to have received these teachings directly from God….“In 1873, however, Dr. Armauer Hansen looked through a microscope at a slide from a leprosy patient. The tiny red dots he saw thrust the world out of the Dark Ages of leprosy. The tiny red dots were the leprosy bacteria. Finally, people realized that leprosy was an infection. It was passed from person to person. Millions of leprosy bacteria live in the nose. 7 You can catch leprosy from a simple sneeze in the face. Leprosy bacteria can even live dried out for several days. 8 Thus you can even catch leprosy from eating off an unwashed plate. After 3,500 years, science had discovered the secret of quarantine. Separating infected patients would stop the spread of leprosy. Norway enacted the Norwegian Leprosy Act, requiring strict enforcement of the biblical precautions. In less than sixty years, Norway’s leper count dropped from 2,858 to 69. Eventually the great discoveries of science allowed Norway to wipe out leprosy. Many countries began to practice God’s command. “As long as he has the infection… he must live alone outside the camp” (Lev. 13: 46). Soon much of the world was free of leprosy—a disease that had ravaged humanity for centuries. Dr. Rosen notes: The church took as its guiding principle the concept of contagion as embodied in the Old Testament…. This idea and its practical consequences are defined with great clarity in the book of Leviticus…. Once the priest had diagnosed leprosy, the individual had to live in protective quarantine, segregated from the community. Following the precepts laid down in Leviticus the church undertook the task of combating leprosy;… [and] it accomplished the first great feat… in methodical eradication of disease. 9 They experienced the promise of God: “If you will give careful attention to the voice of the Lord your God… I will put none of these diseases upon you…. (S. I. MD McMillen & David E. MD Stern, None of These Diseases: The Bible’s Health Secrets for the 21st Century, 271-302 (Kindle Edition); Grand Rapids, Michigan; Revell)
We see another example of this in Leviticus 13:45, which mandates infected people to wear masks. This was likely to prevent the spread of infection. In the same context, Moses warned about the danger of people infecting others by “spitting” on them (Leviticus 15:7-8). This wasn’t talking about a hostile act of one person to another, but of infection. In our time, we realize from a scientific point of view that droplets of spittle and saliva can transfer bacteria and viruses. Indeed, we learned about the value of masks during the coronavirus pandemic! These were worn not only to help keep one from becoming infected, but from unintentionally infecting others as well.
The scientific evidence supporting universal mask-wearing is substantial an advancing rapidly…A number of studies on closely related viral infections confirm the effectiveness of masking.…These findings point to the need for source control-such as masking-to reduce the amount of droplets and aerosols exhaled by those infected. They also point to the need for universal masking, since almost half of infectious transmission involves infected individuals who do not have symptoms…You have probably heard that wearing a mask is more effective in protecting other people than protecting the wearer. Here’s why. If a person without a mask exhales the droplets, these airborne particles rapidly shrink in size from evaporation while in the air. Because the droplets become much smaller once in the air, those particles—now tiny—can make their way through a cloth mask that someone else is wearing. Wearing a mask blocks a higher proportion of the larger droplets that are exhaled by a masked person, stopping the droplets before they evaporate into tiny particles that could penetrate someone else’s cloth mask. It may not be necessary to wear medical respirators with higher filtration rates than those provided by cloth masks. An extensive review of the scientific and medical literature by an international consortium of scientists concluded that if at least 60 percent of people wore masks that are 60 percent effective in blocking viral transmission, similar to the expected performance of a two-layer cotton mask, then the coronavirus pandemic could be stopped. 9 It should be emphasized that the current scientific evidence has only shown the effectiveness of nonmedical masks for source control. Stately simply, cloth masks protect those near the wearer. Only limited evidence supports the possible protective role of nonmedical masks for wearers themselves. (Sean Hashimoto MD, The Case for Masks: Science-Based Advice for Living During the Coronavirus Pandemic, 963-1057 (Kindle Edition); New York, NY; Skyhorse Publishing)
Evidence after evidence documents the truthfulness and Divine origin of the Bible.
Father, thank You for Your Word. Help us to better learn from it and to better apply it to our lives. Amen.
Note: If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy my book, Old Apologetics For A New Age: Volume Two—The Inspiration Of The Bible. In this volume, we examine numerous lines of evidence supporting the Bible’s Divine origin, including fulfilled prophecy, scientific foreknowledge, archaeology, manuscript evidence, and the remarkable unity of Scripture. Available through my Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/marktabata.