In these days, where church gatherings are restricted and the Internet has become the greatest tutor of so many, we desperately need to think biblically about all aspects of life, including quarantine laws. Let me urge you to go read Leviticus 13–15 and consider if your practices of quarantine are something that resonates with God’s Word or not. And if not, what would God have you to do?

So here we are, watching COVID-restrictions fall into place like dominoes, and many of us are wondering if these are the best protocols or not. Since around March of this year, they have become a “normal” part of life in our state and around the world. Yet, it is worth asking, are they effective? Are they just? Where did they come from? Will they work this time? And what if anything does Scripture say about quarantines?

Earlier this week, I pointed to an article by Brian Tabb on a biblical view of diseases. If you haven’t read that, you should. Today, I want to follow up with a summary of an article from Old Testament scholar, Roy Gane. Gane has written extensively on the Old Testament, but especially on Leviticus and its purification laws. More recently, in response to COVID-19, he has written up a short piece (“God’s Guidance for Controlling Contagions“) outlining things we can learn from the Law of Moses regarding quarantine laws today. And it’s this piece that I want to consider today.

Four Truths about Quarantine Laws from the Book of Leviticus

For those who have not read Leviticus lately, there are three chapters (Leviticus 13–15), which address issues of quarantine and treating contagious diseases. Written as a part of Leviticus’s holiness code, Moses gives instructions to Israel for walking in purity before the Holy One of Israel. In particular, these three chapters offer instruction (torah) for dealing with leprosy and other bodily emissions. And in his article, Gane nicely explicates how they might apply today.

Acknowledging the key distinctions between Israel then and modern Christians today, he draws eight analogies for applying quarantine laws. I’ve shared four of them below, with a few complementary thoughts included. If you want to know how Scripture might begin to address quarantines, you should read Leviticus 13–15 and consider what is outlined below. Gane’s words are in italicizes; mine are not.

1. Biblical quarantines rightly order the whole community, and do not turn a healthy community into a sick ward.

Ancient Israelites who were infected by severe physical ritual impurities were separated from other people, who could go on with life and business as usual. Testing by experts (cf. examination by priests in Lev. 13) and self-diagnosis (cf. cases of genital flows in Lev. 15) are crucial for identifying and isolating those who are actually infected with impure conditions.

As you can see, the instructions from Leviticus, summarized by Gane, are out of step with 2020’s COVID restrictions, which are more appropriately called “protective sequestrations” not quarantines. In our modern period,  identifying, separating, and quarantining the sick for a given amount of time, as Leviticus instructs, is not the norm. Rather, to prevent the spread of disease, every one is treated like a leper and forced in various ways to separate themselves (social distancing) and quarantine (sheltering at home).

As we know too well, this approach shuts down society and effectively turns society into a giant leper colony. Recalling the spatial imagery of Israel’s camp may help us appreciate what God intended in quarantine—and what we are missing today.

As long as Israel walked in the Wilderness, the twelve tribes camped around the tabernacle (see Numbers 1–3). In between the tabernacle and the tents stood the Levites and the priests. And thus, within the camp there were concentric circles of holiness and ritual purity that radiated from the center to the edges. When someone was pronounced a leper they were removed from the camp and put outside edges. This gave them time to recover, without infecting others in the camp. Leviticus 13–15 gives all the details for how this process would work.

It should be noted, the purpose of this system was ritual purity, not hygiene. Nevertheless, there is something to learn here. Namely, the camp was the place of life and liberty; outside the camp was the place where lepers and other unclean Israelites dwelt until their condition changed. Thus, in the name of caring for the whole community and keeping the community clean, those with the disease were given a place to stay outside the camp. This system, therefore, cared for the community and the afflicted individuals.

The principle to be applied, which Gane notes, is that the sickness of some did not shut down business as usual. Consider what would happen if the Israelites could not gather manna each day or worship on the Sabbath? It would have been a colossal disaster—spiritually, physically, and so on. Yet, this is exactly the posture taken in our modern world.

Taking their cues from a High School experiment—yes, a high school social networking experiment!—a White House-appointed task force under George W. Bush created protocols for “protective sequestration.” While initially receiving all manner of opposition, what has come to play out in 2020 was eventually adopted under the Obama Administration. You can read the whole story here: “The Untold Story of the Birth of Social Distancing.”

For our purposes, it is worth considering the origins and the intentions of quarantines. Ask yourself, where is wisdom and justice to be found? Is it in the convoluted history of social distancing which turns on human fears and traces their origins to a New Mexico high school? Or might we find a more just and loving approach to quarantines in Leviticus? Without suggesting that Leviticus 13–15 applies directly today, there is good reason to learn from its logic, because biblical quarantines rightly order the whole community, and do not turn a healthy community into a sick ward.

2. Biblical Quarantines Affirm God’s Goodness in the Symptomatic Transmission of Sickness and Call Us to Focused Protection.

In Leviticus 13:45, an Israelite who is isolated because of skin disease voluntarily adopts a distinctive appearance (in this case, of mourning) and notifies others at a distance of their condition so they will know not to approach. It is helpful if those infected by diseases such as COVID-19 take analogous precautions by identifying themselves in some recognizable way and telling others to stay away if they (the infected) must go out and about.

One aspect of the appearance of an isolated Israelite with skin disease was the covering of the “mustache” (or upper lip/mouth area) to show mourning (Lev. 13:45; cf. Ezek 24:17, 22). For modern people, such a covering would function like a “mask” to protect others from the breath of the diseased individual. Interestingly, a pastor in Australia has told me that presenting such biblical strategies to his church members and guests has “made people feel easier about following government restrictions by seeing them in line with God’s instructions rather than a scheme of Satan and his cronies.”

If modern restrictions turn the whole camp into a leper colony, they have also treated everyone as a COVID-carrier—whether they show signs of sickness or not. This, the asymptomatic carrier line of argument, has been a large contributor to the fear many have felt and the legitimatization of masking everyone. Yet, it is worth remembering that even Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that asymptomatic persons are not the problem. As Daniel Horowitz has observed (“A Severely Symptomatic Lie about Asymptomatic Spread“),

Dr. Fauci himself, before this became political and a tool for control, stated very emphatically that “the driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.” “Even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks,”said Fauci in a January 28 press conference.

In the same article, Horowitz cites new research that denies the transmission of COVID by way of asymptomatic carriers. He writes, “following the data and the scientific research after eight months of torture has landed us in the same position we started this year – quarantining the healthy is counterproductive and achieves nothing in stopping the spread of a respiratory virus.” And this wrongheaded approach to quarantines brings us back to Leviticus.

In his kindness, God has plagued the world with diseases that are observable and transmissible by those who demonstrate evidence of sickness. Imagine if people dropped dead of pneumonia or diabetes without any signs. Medicine—ancient and modern—has depended on bodies displaying signs of sickness, and treatment is best prescribed when the conditions are perceived early and not ignored. In Israel, this is why priests were called to examine the sick in Israel; they could perceive in the flesh of the sick signs of leprosy. And today, this is why doctors go to school for years, to learn how the body functions so that they can respond with appropriate medicine.

Then like now, sickness is diagnosed by signs in the body. And in such cases, the loving thing to do for the sick person to identify, and not deny, themselves as sick and to stay away from others. But what happens when we believe that the sickness is wholly invisible? The only workable option is to treat everyone as sick. Everyone must wear a mask and signify that proximity is dangerous.

This is what the social distancing experts, whose suggestions have changed every few weeks, have told us. But consider if we took the Levitical option, and only made the sick wear a mask when they went out in public. Clearly, Gane is writing his article when the world was a touch more sane. I can’t imagine anyone saying today, “If you have COVID, you can go out, just wear a mask.”

Yet, that approach would be far more workable, as it  would only focus the concern with those showing signs of sickness. Maybe going out with a mask is not the best option; but focused protection seems to match the biblical model more than some endless blanket protection.

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