The Strand Study Bible

LEVITICUS

LEVITICUS

261

of the importance of isolating those who had an infectious disease. NOTE – One of the most stunning evidences of the inspiration of the Scriptures ( Job 38:4 ) is the great number of medical truths that have lain buried within its pages for more than 3,500 years, only to be discovered by man’s endeavor within the last few centuries or even years ( I Cor 6:18 , Heb 12:15 b and Mt 6:25 ). Consider the following four examples: * To this day, many people around the world still fail to “circumcise” their male children, and the results are devastating . Dr. S.I. McMillen in None of These Diseases notes: Cancer of the cervix is one of the most common cancers in women. It comprises twenty-five per cent of all cancers in women and eighty per cent of all their genital cancers. These statistics are even more pathetic because the large majority of deaths could have been prevented by following an instruction that God gave to Abraham. The history of this recognition is intriguing. In the early 1900’s Dr. Hiram N Wineberg, while studying records of patients in New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, observed that Jewesses were comparatively free from this common cancer. It was an astonishing finding! Here was a group who had suffered far less from the giant killer than had other women... In 1949 gynecologists at the Mayo Clinic noted that in 568 consecutive cases of cervical cancer, not a single Jewess was among the victims. In 1954, in a vast study of 86,214 women in Boston, it was observed that cancer of the cervix in non-Jewish women was eight and one half times more frequent than in Jewish women. Why are the Jewish women comparatively free of cervical cancer? Medical researchers now agree that this spectacular freedom results from the practice of circumcision in Jewish men–which God ordered Abraham to institute four thousand years ago... An editorial in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology , notes that both Jewish women and IndianMoslem women have a low incidence of cervical cancer, and observes that these two otherwise dissimilar people, have only one pertinent common denominator in their backgrounds–circumcision of the males... Medical science recognizes the fact, but unfortunately the general public is still unaware of the value of circumcision…As a result many virulent bacteria, including the cancer-producing Smegma bacillus, can grow profusely... After many laborious years of study, medical science has at last accepted the best method of preventing two deadly cancers in men and women. Medical science has at last arrived–four thousand years late... Some people doubt the miracles by which God protected the Israelites during the plagues of Egypt, and dried up the Red Sea for their escape from bondage. Yet these miracles are small indeed compared to the miraculous, God- given directions that have saved the Israelites and others from plagues, epidemics and cancer for many centuries. 1 For many hundreds of years the dreaded disease leprosy had killed countless millions of people in Europe. The extent of the horrible malady among Europeans is given by Dr. George Rosen, Columbia University professor of public health: “Leprosy cast the greatest blight that threw its shadow over the daily life of medieval humanity. Fear of all other diseases taken together can hardly be compared to the terror spread by leprosy. Not even the Black Death in the fourteenth century or the appearance of syphilis toward the end of the fifteenth century produced a similar state of fright…Early in the Middle Ages, during the sixth and seventh centuries, it began to spread more widely in Europe and became a serious social and health problem. It was endemic particularly among the poor and reached a terrifying peak in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.” What did the physicians offer to stop the ever-increasing ravages of leprosy? Some taught that it was “brought on by eating hot food, pepper, garlic and the meat of diseased hogs.” Other physicians said it was caused by malign conjunction of the planets. Naturally, their suggestions for prevention were utterly worthless. Another plague that made the Dark Ages really dark was the Black Death. In the fourteenth century alone, this killer took the lives of one out of four persons, an estimated total of sixty million. It was the greatest disaster ever recorded in human history: “Sweeping everything before it, this plague brought panic and confusion in its train…The dead were hurled pell-mell into huge pits, hastily dug for the purpose, and putrefying bodies lay about everywhere in the house and streets. The sexton and the physician were cast into the same deep and wide grave; the testator and his heirs and executors were hurled from the same cart into the same hole together.” What brought the major plagues of the Dark Ages under control? George Rosen gives us the answer: Leadership was taken by the church, as the physicians had nothing to offer. The church took as its guiding principle the concept of contagion as embodied in the Old Testament…This idea and its practical consequences are defined with great clarity in the book of Leviticus. …Once the condition of leprosy had been established, the patient was to be segregated and excluded from the community. Following the precepts laid down in Leviticus the church undertook the task of combating leprosy…it accomplished the first great feat…in methodical eradication of disease. The procedures came from Leviticus 13:46. 1 3,800 years ago God revealed to Abraham the importance of circumcising the male children (Gen 17:10-14). Sadly, it’s taken the human race close to 4,000 years and countless innocent lives before it finally applied the Sacred Scriptures to the problem. * Up until the Middle Ages (6 th & 7 th centuries) most people failed to uphold sanitary legislation and to “quarantine” their sick, and the results were devastating . Dr. S.I. McMillen in None of These Diseases notes: 3,500 years ago God revealed to Moses that quarantine was a sure way to keep disease from spreading (Lev 13:46). Sadly, it has taken the human race over 2,000 years and millions of lives before it finally applied the Sacred Scriptures to the problem.