and says to him, See thou say nothing to any one, but go, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing what Moses ordained, for a testimony to them.
Jesus has just healed a man of leprosy. Instead of sending him out to tell the story, He sends him to a priest with an offering. Two orders sit side by side. Say nothing — and keep the old ceremony. Why both?
The law that governed leprosy had no cure in it. It gave a procedure for inspecting and declaring, and nothing more.
The priest's job was to pronounce a man with leprosy unclean. It was also his job to pronounce him clean once he was cured. The law had no power to heal. It only noted whether a man was healed or not. The work of ceremonial restoration began only after some other means had cured the disease.
So the priest was the one man who could feel the full force of what had happened. He knew what human hands could not do.
Showing himself to the priest should have raised a question there. If the priest's lips still guarded knowledge, or his heart looked for it, he would have asked: Who has healed him? It would have drawn out the answer from faith — the Lord is here; the Lord has healed him. No one knew better than the priest that man is powerless here. The law has no provision for healing leprosy. It only gives directions for the ceremony that cleanses a man who is already healed.
Older translations read "for a testimony to them." The man's obedience was itself the message. Jehovah, in the next quote, is the Old Testament name of God.
He hides Himself from human praise. He tells the healed man to go and show himself to the priests, as the law of Moses said. Yet this obedience to the law was itself testimony that He is Jehovah. Under the law, Jehovah alone cleansed the leper, and He did it by His own sovereign will. The priest was only the witness that it had been done.
The rarity of the scene gave it weight.
A striking testimony indeed. As far as Scripture tells us, this was the first Israelite leper cleansed since the instructions of Leviticus 13 and 14, given about 1,500 years earlier. Now a cleansed leper stood at the altar with his two birds in his hands. His presence testified that God had come into the land, and was meeting men's need quite apart from anything priests did or any religious ceremony.
Commentators differ on the reason for the silence. One reading takes it as a matter of sequence and speed — the errand came first, and everything else could wait.
Compare "See that you say nothing to anyone" with the Lord's direction to the seventy, "Greet no one on the road" (Luke 10:4). In matters of urgency it was necessary to avoid these long and elaborate greetings. Elisha gave similar instructions to Gehazi (2 Kings 4:29). The word used for the Lord sending him on this errand means "to drive forth." It points to urgency and speed. The Lord told the man to meet his duties to the priests first. Only then could he give himself to the selfish joy of announcing his cure to his excitable friends and neighbours.
Others read the silence as belonging to the character of the One who gave it. He is working for another's reputation, not His own.
He does not seek His own glory, but the glory of the One He serves. So hear the Lord saying to the healed leper, "See that you say nothing to anyone." Still, he is to tell the priest, and so the law becomes a witness to the presence of God in grace. Under the law, God alone could heal the leper, and the priest could only bear witness to what God had done.
The man ignored the instruction. What followed shows why Jesus gave it.
This would be solid testimony for the priests that the man really was healed, without the excitement that many words might cause. The man, however, did not obey. In the same way today, some put so much emphasis on healing that they hinder the true work of God. Healing the body is a simple thing for the Lord. The deeper work in the soul is far more important, and excitement over visible miracles can smother it.
- Cure — the law could inspect and declare, but never heal; the ceremony began only after the cure.
- Certificate — the priest who had once ruled the man unclean was the one fit to confirm him clean, so Jesus sent him there first.
- Claim — by keeping Moses' command, Jesus let the evidence make the claim for Him: only God cleansed leprosy, and God had done it.
- Concealment — the lips He told to stay silent He also sent to the priest. He wanted the witness, not the fame.
- Cost — the man talked instead of obeying, and excitement over healing can smother the deeper work God wants to do in the soul.
But he, having gone forth, began to proclaim [it] much, and to spread the matter abroad, so that he could no longer enter openly into the city, but was without in desert places, and they came to him from every side.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.