Leviticus 14’s Love Story Grand Finale: The Gospels’ Grand Reveal Pt. 1

The grand finale of Leviticus 14’s surprising love story has arrived at last! With the blueprint of the šemen-anointed (olive oil christened) leper in hand, Mark’s Gospel constructs in striking literary artistry the bride that captivates the heart of Jesus! Mark has masterfully integrated the good news Leviticus play into the good news of Jesus Christ. His Gospel—along with Matthew’s, Luke’s, and John’s—take and run with the šemen-anointed ear, thumb, and toe all rolled up into one of Jesus’ followers. This one person combines the “superpowers” of the cleansed leper—blood on the ear, thumb, and toe like the priest, whole consecration like the Nazarite, and šemen on the head like the king. Who consummates the cleansed leper who chooses to dwell in the Lord’s tent? Come and see!

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

Mark 1:40-43 ESV

Jesus’ stern charge to go to the priest and offer what Moses commanded refers to Leviticus 14’s law of the cleansed leper on the day of his cleansing. Mark is picking up the gospel of Leviticus 14! The cleansed leper’s appearance before the priest was to be a “proof to them,” the priesthood. “Proof,” marturion in the Greek, can also be rendered “testimony.” The cleansing of a leper testified of a miraculous event to the people’s spiritual leaders! When the king of Syria sent a letter on behalf of his five-star general, Namaan, the king of Israel responded, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?” (2Ki 5:7). The cleansing of a leper takes a miracle of God. So Jesus cleansing this leper was a sign that this long awaited miracle working Messiah had finally arrived.

How is Leviticus 14 good news? Well, let’s briefly summarize. (If you missed the previous blogs developing this lavish theme, I recommend you do that.) A priest transporting two living birds met up with the cleansed leper outside the camp. The priest’s rituals are drenched in gospel symbolism. He first slaughtered one bird and then freed the other to fly home. The leper, sprinkled with sacrificial blood, was then welcomed back from exile into the camp. But there was a catch. He was barred from his own tent for seven days.

He had to shave off all his hair and wash his clothes, not a once but a twice—on Day One and then again on Day Seven (Lev 14:8-9). On Day Eight, the great day, the priest ushered him to the door of the tabernacle before the Lord. There he was purified with more blood from sacrifices and anointed with olive oil, šemen (sheh’-men), a glorious symbol of the fullness and fatness of the produce of Canaan’s abundance. Blood applied to the cleansed leper’s right ear, right thumb, and big toe of the right foot mimicked the consecration of a priest. This play, though, went over the top! The cleansed leper then had šemen put upon his ear, thumb, and toe. Even the priest didn’t have this blessing!

These symbols expressed God’s invitation to be a new priest, qualitatively different from the Levitical priest of ceremonial rules and rituals. This choreographed dance of symbols tell a story of coming home to God in intimate relationship. Priest in our day comes with a lot of baggage. It’s hard not to think of a priest as a job of meticulously detailed tabernacle tasks for maintenance, upkeep, and transport. Hearing “priest” may conjure up images of the stiff collared species of Roman Catholic or other faith traditions. But when the Lord thinks of a priest, He sees a lover, a bride longing for Him as bridegroom. Our low thoughts need to be renewed by God’s higher thoughts. This person about to be unveiled as the fulfillment of the cleansed leper is the cure for our mental maladies.

Now, this leper, sadly, disobeys Jesus’ stern charge:

But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town.

Mark 1:45 ESV

Had he been obedient, he would have participated in the Lord’s two-act play. Sadly, he missed out on experiencing salvation symbols from isolation and exile to community and welcoming intimacy with the Lord. Let’s look even closer. On Day One he’d have seen one bird sacrificed, its blood spilled into a clay pot (Jesus) with living water (the Holy Spirit). He’d have watched the other bird, another dove, dipped into the blood and water and released to fly home. This is all forward looking to the cross. It helps us re-imagine the blood and water from Jesus’ side with the blood and water dipped dove from the clay pot—the Son of God’s fragile humanity subject to death. Like the living bird emerging from the blood and water out the clay pot, the new Eve emerged out of the soldier-spear incision of the new Adam’s side. Out from within the deep sleep of death, out of the clay pot of human weakness abjected to a Roman cross, came resurrection life—a living dove, dipped in blood and water, released to fly home! We saw how all this portrayed Jesus’ blood being shed for us to release us from our sins to return home.

His skin would have felt seven times the sprinkles of blood and water from the hyssop branch tied to cedarwood by scarlet yarn. He missed out on that blood, symbolic of God’s forgiveness of his sins, that transcended the skin-deep cleansing of leprosy. In a different ceremony, the hyssop, scarlet yarn, and cedarwood were incinerated by altar fire (Num 19:6). This whole burnt offering foreshadowed the sufferings of Christ; Leviticus 14 heralds the glories that follow. The scarlet yarn (Jesus’ blood) united hyssop (cleansing) with cedarwood (living in the Lord’s home, for cedarwood was a harbinger of the temple to come). He missed cleansing’s invite to dwell securely with the Lord in His house.

The play ends with an unresolved tension. Which home will the leper choose: his own tent or the Lord’s tent? Regretfully, he chose to live in his own tent. He received healing from leprosy but rejected making Christ his home. By doing his own thing, he missed Jesus’ even deeper love and a life set apart to pleasing Him.

His absence from Day Eight, though, was perhaps the biggest miss of all. He bypassed preparation for this great day, shaving off all his hair and washing his clothes, symbols of repentance, a new outward change of a God-empowered new heart. He missed additional blood applied to his right ear, right thumb, and right foot’s big toe, mimicking a priest’s consecration to minister to the Lord. Upon the same ear, thumb, and toe came the šemen, an emblem of God’s super-abundant generosity expressing the fertility and fullness of the Promised Land. This šemen is an apt symbol of the Holy Spirit who empowers us to inherit God’s overwhelming generosity provided by Jesus’ death. The seven-fold sprinkling of šemen, in which the leper could have stood, pictured a completeness, a fullness, of life in the Spirit. All that the leper turned down by his disobedience.

Now, I doubt that this leper, prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, would have grasped what all these symbols meant. Only after reflection on His death, resurrection, and ascension would this play make sense. The apostle Peter acknowledges this. Prophetic words like these had implications yet future for God’s people, after the Christ’s sufferings and glories that followed (see 1Pe 1:10-12). The exciting news for us is that we can now fully enjoy the realities to which these symbols pointed! During His earthly ministry Jesus often did or said things that could only be understood after He’d been raised from the dead. Such was sending this cleansed leper off to the priest to offer the sacrifice that Moses commanded.

Fortunately, Mark didn’t end on such a sour note of the leper’s failure to enter into the beautiful symbolism of the Leviticus play. By masterful use of literary designs, Mark will show us someone who did succeed and fulfill everything! We’ll see one who epitomizes the cleansed leper who chose to dwell in the Lord’s tent! He forges an intentional link between this cleansed leper and another one later on. He joins several mutual thematic elements, uses rare words, and emphasizes an insignificant person that raises more questions than the immediate context can answer. It’s a kaleidoscope of coalescing themes. Mark, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is a brilliant craftsman of the Word!

So watch how Mark links this bittersweet scene of the disobedient leper to this familiar scene in the days leading up to Jesus’ passion and crucifixion:

And while [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.

Mark 14:3 ESV

The woman here is nameless, anonymous. What’s important to Mark here is not her identification with her name but with the nameless cleansed leper as we will see. Now the grand reveal has come. The person who fulfills the gospel of Jesus’ Leviticus 14 play is…Mary of Bethany! It is John who lets us in on this woman being Mary (Jn 12:3). Let’s see how Mark employs design patterns that link these two scenes: use of an insignificant person, rare words, and mutually shared thematic elements.

First, the use of an insignificant person. This scene takes place in the house of Simon the leper, in Mary’s home village of Bethany. Who Simon the leper is and what his story is we’re not told. Is he the father of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus? We don’t know. He’s only mentioned here and Matthew 26:6. This out of the blue reference to the obscure Simon the leper signals a design pattern. I find these observations for spotting design patterns in a Gospel narrative insightful:

In an article on Johannine symbolism, Juan Leal offers four criteria that can indicate when the narrative has symbolic as well as a literal meaning: (1) the presence of inconsequential details that seem to play no part in the narrative, (2) a discourse set within the narrative of an event such that they are mutually illuminating, (3) the evangelist’s accentuating of a person who has no significant role in context, (4) the use of later liturgical and Christian expressions.

Mary L. Coloe, Dwelling in the Household of God

Although applicable to John, Mark is no stranger to narrative symbolism. Number 3 has particular relevance, accentuating Simon the leper, who has no significant role in context. Across the breadth of Mark’s Gospel, lepers are mentioned only twice: here and in chapter 1. This is surprising given the fact that Jesus cleansed many lepers. He did ten at one pop (Lk 17:12). It was characteristic of His healing ministry (Mt 11:5, Lk 7:22) and His disciples as well (Mt 10:8). Mark, though, is interested only in these two. Without chapter 1’s cleansed leper, Simon the leper’s unexpected appearance is puzzling. We’ll see how these lepers are among several thematic elements that unite these two scenes.

Secondly, Mark chooses rare words to create a link. Uncommon words shared by scenes separated from each other may hyperlink them for side by side for comparisons from which to glean deeper theological insight. Mark is an expert at this. To cite but one example, using schizō (skhid’-zo) only twice, he tied together the tearing of the heavens at Jesus’ baptism (1:10) with the tearing of the veil at Jesus’ death (15:38) (see my blog “A Day of Visitation in Fiery Trials Pt. 3: The Centurion at the Cross” to see the full development).

And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once,

Mark 1:42-43 ESV

The word for “sternly charged” is embrimaomai (em-brim-ah’-om-ahee). Brimaomai is to rear like an agitated horse or to snort with anger. Adding the prefix “em” intensifies it, so embrimaomai is to rage or be riled up in indignation. The Lord reacting this way I found very puzzling. When the leper first came, Jesus was moved with pity and compassion. What evoked this night and day difference? No apparent reason is given. Perhaps because Jesus knew beforehand how the leper would disobey. Perhaps because Jesus knew the leper’s thoughts like that of the scribes and Pharisees in the very next scene.

What’s more is that when Matthew and Luke describe this scene, neither say Jesus “sternly charged” him. This peculiar detail is unique to Mark. Is this just Mark’s storytelling flair to supply imaginative, picturesque details? Or is it something more? Pondering embrimaomai by itself here I found challenging to make sense of, but when combined with its only other appearance in the Simon the leper scene, these puzzle pieces started fitting together.

There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her.

Mark 14:4-5 ESV

The word Mark hand-picked for scolded is embrimaomai. The imperfect tense infers repetition; they kept on scolding her. So these two scenes uniquely share lepers and that rare word embrimaomai. We’ll see shortly how embrimaomai functions in comparing these two scenes.

There’s yet a third reinforcing element, a bridal motif. While not obvious by a casual reading, a close scrutiny of hyperlinks to the Hebrew Scriptures makes it clear. Watch how Mark, along with John, choose rare word gems as hyperlinks to the Old Testament.

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.

Mark 14:3 ESV

Nard, a highly aromatic perfume imported from India, is the Greek word nardos (nar’dos), used in the New Testament only here and in John’s parallel account:

Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard [nardos], and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

John 12:3a ESV

Mary’s expensive nardos is one of several pieces Mark and John used to reenact a scene from the Song of Solomon that extols the love between King Solomon and the lowly Shulamite vineyard keeper who became his wife. Tucked within Song of Solomon’s eight chapters is a déjà vu episode of our current scene.

While the king was on his couch, my nard [nardos] gave forth its fragrance.

Song of Songs 1:12 ESV

The Shulamite bride is speaking; the king is Solomon. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, uses nardos for nard. The Septuagint references nardos only in Song of Solomon (1:12, 4:13 and 4:14). Those early disciples studying Mark, armed with intimate knowledge the Hebrew Scriptures and fluency in Greek, would likely have spotted this. We, however, strangers to the Old Testament (especially Song of Songs!) can overlook what’s hidden in plain sight.

But there’s more that weaves Mary together with the Shulamite than just this rare word nardos. The wafting aroma of the nard likewise employs a unique Greek word:

The house was filled with the fragrance [osme] of the perfume.

John 12:3b ESV

The nard’s fragrance is osmē (os-may’), its sole appearance in the Gospels. The Septuagint translates the nard’s fragrance as osmē: “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance [osmē].” So nard and fragrance form a close bond hyperlinking these two scenes!

King Solomon’s positioning “on his couch” is reenacted by King Jesus “reclining at table” when approached by Mary with the nard. “On his couch” is the Greek translation of anaklisis (ah-nah’-klee-sees), which means a reclining, leaning, lying, or sitting at meals. It has the same meaning as “reclining at table” (katakeimai) that Mark says what Jesus, the king greater than Solomon, was doing when Mary’s nard gave forth its fragrance! These literary breadcrumbs forming a trail into the woods of Song of Songs stack upon Mary a layer of Shulamite imagery. Mary is the new Shulamite to the One greater than Solomon! She pictures a bride for her king, Jesus.

We now circle back to the gospel that King Jesus preached to Moses in Leviticus 14. Its living bird of freedom symbolizes both the cleansed leper and the new Eve to which the prophetic eye gazed forward. The leper that Jesus cleansed within Mark’s storyline opted out of the Leviticus good news play. Had he obeyed, he would have imaged His bride, the new Eve. He instead illustrates a defective bride, one deficient and found wanting. Something has gone awry, as the embrimaomai response from Jesus toward the disobedient leper hints at.

So Mark sets up two contrasting brides: the cleansed leper as the rogue, runaway bride and Mary of Bethany, exemplar of the true. She epitomizes a bride who loves Jesus with her whole heart. Mary succeeds where the leper failed. By this comparison I’m not suggesting that Mary had been a leper. There’s nothing of that in the Gospel record. Rather, she embodies the glorious symbolism of the cleansed leper in Leviticus 14. It’s wonderful beyond words!

Having established Mark’s literary linkage of lepers and bride motifs between chapters 1 and 14, let’s revisit the unusual linking word embrimaomai and see how it functions. There’s an inversion going on that Mark wants us to see. The bride figure in each scene is the object of embrimaomai. In chapter 1 it’s Jesus who directs embrimaomai towards the cleansed leper. “And Jesus sternly charged [embrimaomai] him and sent him away at once” (1:43). In chapter 14 it’s the disciples, spearheaded by traitorous Judas, who direct embrimaomai towards Mary. “There were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.’ And they scolded [embrimaomai] her.” (14:4-5). Chapter 1: indignation towards a flawed bride in Jesus’ eyes; chapter 14: indignation towards a true bride in the disciples’ eyes but admiration in Jesus’ eyes. These sharp contrasts bring into focus what character qualities that make for a bride that our Lord Jesus takes pleasure in.

Taking one last look at the šemen in the cleansed leper play of Leviticus 14 will present stunning contrasts between these two brides.

And some of the oil that remains in his hand the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt offering.

Leviticus 14:17 ESV

As has been mentioned, blood applied to the leper’s ear, thumb, and big toe is a hyperlink to the Levite’s consecration to be a priest (Ex 29:19-20; Lev 8:24). Although the priests had blood and anointing oil sprinkled on their garments (Lev 8:30), they had no šemen on ear, thumb, and toe as the cleansed leper did. What’s the meaning of all this? The anointing of šemen excels the cleansing of blood. This cleansed leper, therefore, had a superior consecration to the Lord! Did Mary of Bethany fulfill the šemen-anointed ear, thumb, and foot in devotion to the Lord that surpassed that of the Levitical priests? She did! Much in every way! Mary completes God’s picture of the priest He always wanted: a beautiful, wholehearted bride.

The blood and šemen on the cleansed leper had first been given prominence by the wave offering. The wave offering, like a verbal “Behold!”, drew attention to the Lord’s obvious delight in that blood and šemen. Mary’s embodiment of the šemen-anointed ear, thumb, and foot elicited Jesus’ undistracted pleasure! As we piece together her story from the Gospels, this becomes clear. We’d sketched out the beauty of cleansed leper’s ear anointed with šemen as being fully satiated and satisfied hearing the voice of the Lord day after day. Mary is renowned for this. We saved the remaining two symbols, the thumb and toe, for their glorious fulfillment in the Gospels. What was true in Mary’s life, Jesus desires to implement in your life and mine.

I hear so many references to Mary and her broken alabaster jar in songs and sermons to express our heartfelt love for Jesus Christ. And no wonder, for in this sacrificial act of devotion, Mary of Bethany appears as this tower of “brideliness.” This Leviticus 14 play is the backstory that expands our imagination and deepens our spiritual insight into what Mary did. So next time we’ll wrap up with the Gospels’ invitation to gaze at the glory of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, so our devotion too can be transformed from glory to glory.