3. Elisha treats the case of Naaman as typical in its nature, and as coming under the provisions of the law for the cleansing of leprosy. This is manifest from three things which appear in the very brief narrative. (1) In his message to Naaman, he distinguishes between the physical healing, and the ritual cleansing. “Thy flesh shall _come again_ unto thee; and, thou shalt _be clean_.” Thus each is separately promised. (2.) He requires Naaman to “wash _seven times_.” The meaning of this seven times we have seen. It symbolized a radical cure of the evil of heart leprosy, the native corruption of sin—a cure by which the sinner will be presented pure and sanctified in the seventh, or judgment day. The mode of this cure was represented in the law by sprinkling seven times. The priest “shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean.”—Lev. xiv, 7. (3.) He must wash in the river Jordan, and nowhere else. But why there? Because the cleansing of the leper, according to the law must be by sprinkling with “running water.”—Lev. xiv, 5, 6, 50-52. For the self-washing, no such prescription was given. The Jordan was appointed, because healing to the leper meant life to the dead. It meant the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit, and for this none but the water of life that flows in the river of the heavenly Canaan will suffice. And inasmuch as the land of Israel was typical of that better country, no water so proper for the present occasion as that which flowed in the one river of Israel. If Palestine was made a type of heaven, the one river of Palestine at once became the proper type of that “river of God, which is full of water.”