48 "If the priest shall come in, and examine it, and behold, the plague hasn't spread in the house, after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And if the priest shall come in, and look upon it,.... That is, on the seventh day of the second week of its being shut up:
and, behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house was plastered; See Gill on Leviticus 14:42,
then the priest shall pronounce the house clean; fit to be inhabited, and so no more to be shut up, but free for use as before:
because the plague is healed; the infection being wholly removed by taking out the stones, scraping, and plastering the house, and so an entire stop put to the spread of it.
the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed--The precautions here described show that there is great danger in warm countries from the house leprosy, which was likely to be increased by the smallness and rude architecture of the houses in the early ages of the Israelitish history. As a house could not contract any impurity in the sight of God, the "atonement" which the priest was to make for it must either have a reference to the sins of its occupants or to the ceremonial process appointed for its purification, the very same as that observed for a leprous person. This solemn declaration that it was "clean," as well as the offering made on the occasion, was admirably calculated to make known the fact, to remove apprehension from the public mind, as well as relieve the owner from the aching suspicion of dwelling in an infected house.
If the priest should find, however, that after the fresh plastering the mole had not appeared again, or spread (to other places), he was to pronounce the house clean, because the evil was cured, and (Leviticus 14:49-53) to perform the same rite of purification as was prescribed for the restoration of a man, who had been cured of leprosy, to the national community (Leviticus 14:4-7). The purpose was also the same, namely, to cleanse (חטּא cleanse from sin) and make atonement for the house, i.e., to purify it from the uncleanness of sin which had appeared in the leprosy. For, although it is primarily in the human body that sin manifests itself, it spreads from man to the things which he touches, uses, inhabits, though without our being able to represent this spread as a physical contagion.
*More commentary available at chapter level.