The Great Physician III: Cleanliness is Next To Godliness

I'm going to be blunt here. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that the Mosaic Law given to Moses by God improved individual and communal health. While the cultures around them were awash in superstition, Moses and the Jewish people left a legacy of unparalleled medical advancement. William R. Vis, M.D., a member of the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians, stated:

"As a scientist [physician], Moses rises above all other Biblical characters because of his stupendous knowledge of public health and hygiene. The safeguarding of the people Israel under the difficulties encountered should, perhaps, rank as the greatest achievement in all medical history."

Undergirding all of the Jewish people's health advancements was God's law which not only protected the Jews from disease and disorders, it protected them from spiritual death by pointing them towards a Holy God who would send His only begotten Son Jesus.

In Dr. Vis book he uses leprosy as an example of God’s use of obedience to the Mosaic law to prevent the spread of disease in ancient times, pointing out that the Great Lawgiver used techniques unknown to the medical profession until modern times:

"To show how far Moses was ahead of modern society we need only to remind ourselves that the word quarantine originated in the fourteenth century when the Italian ports of Venice and Genoa first refused admission to immigrants who might be harboring [bubonic] plague and required them to stay on board for forty days—hence the word quarantine. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leprosy spread over southern Europe until the principles of Moses were re-enacted successfully. Moses disinfected the patient’s clothing [Leviticus 13:47], bed, and even the house itself [Leviticus 14:34]. The leper was required to wear a covering (mask) upon his upper lip [Leviticus 13:45]. On occasion the priest was requested to go outside of the camp to examine the suspect [Leviticus 13:46]—further to protect the populace." (2)

Another medical scientist noticed the Pentateuch’s astoundingly modern outlook on health and hygiene also. D. H. Trapnell, M.D., Consultant Radiologist at Westminster Hospital in London, observed:

One respect in which Jewish medicine was better than that of contemporary peoples was the remarkable sanitary code of the Israelites in Moses’ time. … The Jews, as a nation, might not have survived their time in the wilderness, or the many other vicissitudes through which they passed, without their sanitary “code.” It deals with public hygiene, water supply, sewage disposal, inspection and selection of food, and control of infectious disease. The most interesting thing about it is that it implies a knowledge which in the circumstances of the Exodus and the wilderness wanderings they could scarcely have discovered for themselves, e.g. the prohibition, as food, of pigs and of animals which had died natural deaths [Leviticus 7:24], the burial or burning of excreta [Deuteronomy 23:13, Exodus 29:14], etc., and the contagious nature of some diseases. … In a number of respects the biblical outlook on the sick, and on health in general, has a bearing on modern medical practice, and is perhaps more up-to-date than is generally realized. (3)

(1) William R. Vis, M.D., “Medical Science and the Bible,” in Modern Science and Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen Press, 1950), 238. 

(2) Ibid., 244

(3) New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996), s.v. “Health, Disease and Healing.”