It is not possible to be certain about the significance of all the details of the ritual. However, it is reminiscent of that associated with the scapegoat in Leviticus 16:6–10. In our present passage, the live bird released into the field perhaps reflects the patient’s disease being carried off into the wilderness. Keil and Delitzsch,1 for example, say, “Whereas one of the birds, however, had to lay down its life, and shed its blood for the person to be cleansed, the other was made into a symbol of the person to be cleansed by being bathed in the mixture of blood and water; and its release, to return to its fellows and into its nest, represented his deliverance from the ban of death which rested upon leprosy, and his return to the fellowship of his own nation.”
4 the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop.