Catholic Commentary
Scalp and Beard Afflictions: The Diagnosis of Itch (Favus) (Part 2)
37But if in his eyes the itch is arrested and black hair has grown in it, then the itch is healed. He is clean. The priest shall pronounce him clean.
Leviticus 13:37 describes the priest's examination for healing of a scalp infection called neteq, determining that the person is ritually clean when the affliction has stopped spreading and healthy black hair has regrown in the affected area. The priest's visual declaration of cleanness formally restores the healed person to the covenant community and temple worship, completing both the physical healing and social restoration.
The priest's power to declare someone clean mirrors the confessor's power to absolve: both see with their eyes, both pronounce with authority, and both restore the healed to communion.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers, drawing on Origen's allegorical method and confirmed by the fourfold sense of Scripture (CCC §115–118), consistently read the Levitical purity laws as figures of deeper spiritual realities. The neteq — an itch that spreads, thins the hair, and disfigures the head — is a fitting image of sin, particularly the creeping, habitual sins that erode the spiritual vitality of the soul. Sin "itches": it begins with a subtle irritation, spreads if unchecked, and leaves the soul thin and pale, stripped of the dark, vigorous hair of virtue.
The black hair that grows back is a powerful image of spiritual restoration. Just as Samson's regrown hair signaled renewed consecration (Judges 16:22), healthy hair here is the outward sign of inward renewal. In the allegorical reading, it figures the return of charity, the virtues, and the grace of God to a soul that had been spiritually compromised.
Most significantly, the priest's declaration of cleanness is a type of the Sacrament of Penance. The priest does not heal — God heals — but the priest pronounces, and his pronouncement is efficacious within the covenant order. This is precisely what Christ gave to his apostles in John 20:22–23: the authority to bind and loose, to declare sins forgiven or retained. The Levitical priest saw with his eyes; the Catholic priest acts in the person of Christ, with divine authority vested in him through Holy Orders.
Catholic theology finds in this verse a remarkable anticipation of the Church's sacramental and ministerial structure. The Catechism teaches that the Old Testament priesthood was a "prefiguration" of the priesthood of Christ (CCC §1539–1540), and nowhere is this more vivid than in passages like Leviticus 13:37, where the priest's diagnostic and declaratory role foreshadows the confessor's role in the Sacrament of Penance.
St. Ambrose of Milan, in De Paenitentia, explicitly compares the Levitical priests who examined lepers with the Christian priest who absolves sinners, arguing that if the old priesthood had such authority over the body, how much more does the new priesthood have authority over the soul. St. John Chrysostom similarly marvels that priests today have a greater power than the Levites: not merely to declare clean but to make clean through the sacramental word.
The double declaration — "it is healed" and "he is clean" — also speaks to the Catholic distinction between the res (reality) of grace and its sacramental form. The Council of Trent (Session XIV) insisted that absolution is not a bare declaration of an already-accomplished fact but a genuine judicial and ministerial act. Yet healing must precede it: the priest must see contrition, as the Levitical priest saw black hair. Without the sign of genuine repentance, the declaration cannot be made.
Additionally, this verse illuminates the communal dimension of sin and healing. Uncleanness in Leviticus was never merely private — it disrupted the holiness of the entire camp. Restoration to cleanness was restoration to the Body. Catholic moral theology has always maintained this ecclesial dimension: sin wounds not only the sinner but the Church (CCC §1469), and the Sacrament of Penance restores one to full communion with both God and the Church.
Contemporary Catholics can find in this single verse a remarkably concrete model for their sacramental life. Notice three things: the priest looks carefully, the signs of healing are objective and visible, and the declaration is definitive.
In the practice of Confession, Catholics are sometimes tempted toward either scrupulosity — doubting their absolution because they "don't feel clean" — or laxity — assuming they are forgiven without genuine conversion. Leviticus 13:37 corrects both errors. The priest's examination requires real signs of healing: the itch arrested (the behavior stopped or sincerely renounced) and black hair growing (positive virtue replacing the sin). Contrition, confession, and the firm purpose of amendment are the "black hair" the confessor is looking for.
Moreover, the finality of "He is clean" should give Catholic penitents confidence. When absolution is given, the declaration is real. The Church, like the Levitical priest, has the authority to say "clean," and that word stands. For those who struggle with guilt long after confession, this passage is a quiet pastoral reminder: when the priest speaks, God acts, and God's work is complete.
Commentary
Literal and Narrative Meaning
Leviticus 13 is devoted to the priestly discernment of skin diseases (Hebrew: nega tzara'at), a vast diagnostic chapter covering everything from leprosy-like conditions to mold on garments. Verses 29–37 form a distinct sub-unit addressing afflictions of the scalp and beard region, specifically the neteq — translated variously as "itch," "scall," or "favus" — a fungal or inflammatory condition affecting the hair follicles.
Verse 37 is specifically a follow-up examination. The priestly protocol in Leviticus regularly required a seven-day quarantine and a second inspection (cf. vv. 5–6, 31–34). This verse describes what the priest is to look for at that second examination:
"In his eyes the itch is arrested": The phrase "in his eyes" (b'einav) is crucial. The determination of cleanness or uncleanness rests entirely on the priest's visual judgment — not on the sufferer's self-report, not on elapsed time alone, but on what the priest sees. The itch has stopped spreading. The affliction is not merely dormant; it is visibly checked.
"Black hair has grown in it": In the preceding verses (vv. 30–32), yellow, thin hair was the diagnostic marker of active neteq — a sign that the infection had attacked the hair shaft at the root. Black hair, by contrast, is the hair of health. Its regrowth in the previously afflicted site signals regeneration of the tissue. Life — visible, dark, vigorous — has returned where there was pallor and thinning. This is not merely the absence of disease but the positive presence of new growth.
"The itch is healed. He is clean.": The text offers a double declaration — a medical conclusion ("it is healed") followed by a ritual and social verdict ("he is clean"). These are related but distinct. The healing is what God has done in the flesh; the cleanness is the formal restoration of the person to the covenant community. One without the other is incomplete.
"The priest shall pronounce him clean": The priest does not make the person clean — God's healing does that — but the priest declares it, and that declaration has real, binding social and religious force. Without it, the healed person remains excluded from temple worship and communal life. The priestly word of cleanness is therefore an act of restoration to communion.