cloths rent] Which might conduce to the cure of the diseased; for so the bad humours might the better evaporate and breath out; and to the caution or safety of the sound, who might thereby be warned to keepe a due distance from the infected partie; for they did weare long garments close before: and it might also signifie the sorrow of the Leper because of his present sense of sinne and misery; which is often signified by the rending of the garments in the Scriptures. covering upon his lip] See Ezekiel 24:17. & Micah 3:7. uncleane, uncleane] As lamenting his misery, and giving warning to others against the infection. Such as leprosie is to the body, is sinne to the soule; and therefore we must flye from the infection of it, as a loathsome leprosie, Esa. 52. 11. Lamentations 4:15. the cause of this disease here described many times did not so much proceed from a naturall distemper, as (out of an excesse of flegme, or black melancholy bloud) as from a divine judgement for the sin of man; see 2 Kings 15:5. especially that kind of it which set so deepe an infection upon the clothes and wals, Leviticus 14:37. And it is observed to have most infected the Jewes upon their revoltings from Religion, and that Christians tooke the infection of it from their Countrey, when they came thither to manage the warre undertaken for recovery of it out of the hands of the Turks.