The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: When you come into the land of Canaan, which I am giving you to possess, if I put a fungal infection in any house of the land you occupy, the owner of the house shall come and report to the priest, “Something like an infection has appeared in my house.”

The priest shall then order the house to be cleared out before he goes in to examine the infection, lest everything in the house become unclean. Only after this is he to go in to examine the house.

If the priest, upon inspection, finds that the infection on the walls of the house consists of greenish or reddish spots which seem to go deeper than the surface of the wall, he shall go out of the house to the doorway and quarantine the house for seven days.

On the seventh day the priest shall return. If, upon inspection, he finds that the infection has spread on the walls, he shall order the infected stones to be pulled out and cast in an unclean place outside the city.

The whole inside of the house shall then be scraped, and the mortar that has been scraped off shall be dumped in an unclean place outside the city.

Then other stones shall be brought and put in the place of the old stones, and new mortar obtained and plastered on the house.

If the infection breaks out once more in the house after the stones have been pulled out and the house has been scraped and replastered, the priest shall come; and if, upon inspection, he finds that the infection has spread in the house, it is a corrosive fungus in the house, and it is unclean.

It shall be pulled down, and all its stones, beams and mortar shall be hauled away to an unclean place outside the city.

Whoever enters a house while it is quarantined shall be unclean until evening.

Whoever sleeps or eats in such a house shall also wash his garments.

If the priest finds, when he comes to the house, that the infection has in fact not spread in the house after the plastering, he shall declare the house clean, since the infection has been healed.

To purify the house, he shall take two birds, as well as cedar wood, scarlet yarn, and hyssop.

One of the birds he shall slaughter over an earthen vessel with fresh water in it.

Then, taking the cedar wood, the hyssop and the scarlet yarn, together with the living bird, he shall dip them all in the blood of the slaughtered bird and the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times.

Thus he shall purify the house with the bird’s blood and the fresh water, along with the living bird, the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet yarn.

He shall then let the living bird fly away over the countryside outside the city. Thus he shall make atonement for the house, and it will be clean.

This is the ritual for every kind of human scaly infection and scall, and for fungus diseases in garments and houses— for marks, lesions and blotches— to give direction when there is a state of uncleanness and when a state of cleanness. This is the ritual for scaly infection.