Leviticus 13:39

Lev 13:39 Then the priest shall look: and, behold, [if] the bright spots in the skin of their flesh [be] darkish white; it [is] a freckled spot [that] groweth in the skin; he [is] clean.

Ver. 39. A freckled spot.] Or white leprous eruption. This made not a man unclean: no more do mere infirmities make God abhor us.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Freckled spot - If Lev 13:12 refers to the Lepra commonis, the Hebrew בהק bôhaq here may denote some kind of eczema, a skin disease of a somewhat similar external character.

Lev 13:38, Lev 13:39 would seem more in their natural place between Lev 13:17-18.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Lev 13:39; Lev 13:42. If the spots be darkish white — When there was no other symptom but that of whiteness in the skin, the priest was to be cautious not to pronounce it a leprosy, unless the spots were perfectly bright; for if there was any cloudiness in them, it was not a leprosy. And he is informed that a man’s losing his hair by sickness or age, which made him bald, must not be taken for a sign of leprosy. But, (Lev 13:42,) If there were a white reddish sore — It was a sign that such baldness came not from age, nor any accident, but from the leprosy.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

(39) Then the priest shall look.—If the priest, upon examination, finds that these elevated spots are of a dull or palish white colour, then he is to pronounce the patient clean, that is, free of leprosy, since it is simply a white eruption or tetter, which lasts for a few months, causes no inconvenience, and by degrees disappears of itself. Hence it is called bahack, or “white scurf,” and not leprosy. This nameless disorder, which still prevails in the East, is to this day called by the Biblical name bahack.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head towards his face,.... That is, from the crown of his head towards his forehead and temples, the fore part of his head; and so the Misnic doctors distinguish baldness, which is from the crown of the head descending behind to the channel of the neck; and that here mentioned, which is from the crown of the head descending to his face and forehead, over against the hair above (x):

he is forehead bald; to distinguish him from him that is bald behind:

yet is he clean; as the other: these cases are observed, that it might not be concluded that every man that shed his hair or was bald either before or behind was a leper, because the hair of a leper used to fall off from him; if he had not the other signs of leprosy, and which were the sure and true signs of it before mentioned.

(x) Misn. Negaim, c. 10. sect. 10.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Blemish, or scab, of which Celsus speaks, B. 5.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Darkish white, or contracted, or confined to the place where they are, and white.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

39. A freckled spot — Hebrew, bohak. In the R.V., “tetter.” This constitutes a new case, since these peculiar spots do not appear on the parts where the hair grows thick, but only on the neck and face. It is remarkable that the modern Arabs have a kind of leprosy in which some little spots show themselves here and there, called bohak, a word containing the same consonants as the Hebrew term which we are now considering. These spots gradually spread, continuing sometimes only about two months, and then gradually disappearing. They are not contagious nor hereditary, nor specially painful. The treatment of the bohak in Lev_13:38-39 seems to be unnaturally sandwiched between the leprosy of the hairy head and that of the bald head. The sacred writers do not always observe that order of statement required by our canons of rhetoric.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

If the spots be darkish white - Or, contracted, or confined to the place where they are, and white.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

כהות לבנות DULL WHITE — It means that their whiteness is not intense but a dull white.

בהק A BRIGHTNESS — just like the white which shows itself in the flesh of a ruddy man, who is termed rouge in old French, between his red spots: this is called בהק “brightness” — like a man who is covered with lentil-like spots, when between one lentil-like spot and another the flesh shows bright with a pure brightness.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.