'House' in the Bible

Then Moses said to Aaron and to his [younger] sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor let your hair hang loose nor tear your clothes [as expressions of mourning], so that you will not die [also] and so that He will not express His wrath and anger toward all the congregation. But your relatives, the whole house of Israel, may mourn the burning which the Lord has brought about.

“When you come into the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I put a mark of leprosy on a house in your land,

then the one who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, ‘I have seen something that looks like a mark of leprosy in my house.’

The priest shall order that they empty the house before he goes in to examine the mark, so that everything in the house will not have to be declared unclean; afterward he shall go in to see the house.

He shall examine the mark, and if the mark on the walls of the house has greenish or reddish depressions and appears deeper than the surface,

the priest shall go out of the house, to the doorway, and quarantine the house for seven days.

The priest shall return on the seventh day and look; and if the mark has spread on the walls of the house,

He shall have the entire inside area of the house scraped, and the plaster that is scraped off shall be dumped in an unclean place outside the city.

Then they shall take new stones and replace the [contaminated] stones, and he shall take plaster and replaster the house.

“If, however, the mark breaks out again in the house after he has removed the stones and has scraped and replastered the house,

then the priest shall come and look again, and if the mark has spread in the house, it is a malignant leprosy in the house; it is [ceremonially] unclean.

He shall tear down the house—its stones and its timber and all the plaster of the house—and shall take everything outside the city to an unclean place.

Moreover, whoever goes into the house during the time that it is quarantined becomes unclean until evening.

And whoever lies down in the house [to rest] shall wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house shall wash his clothes.

“But if the priest comes in and inspects it and the mark has not spread in the house after the house has been replastered, he shall pronounce the house clean because the mark has not reappeared.

To cleanse the house then, he shall take two birds and cedar wood and scarlet string and hyssop;

and he shall take the cedar wood and the hyssop and the scarlet string, and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the slain bird as well as in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times.

So he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird and with the running water, along with the live bird and the cedar wood and the hyssop and the scarlet string.

But he shall let the live bird go free outside the city into the open field. So he shall make atonement for the house, and it will be clean.”

and for the leprous garment or house,

Then Aaron shall present the bull as the sin offering for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house.

“Aaron shall present the bull as the sin offering for himself and make atonement for himself and for his household (the other priests), and he shall kill the bull as the sin offering for himself.

There shall be no person in the Tent of Meeting when the high priest goes in to make atonement in the Holy Place [within the veil] until he comes out, so that he may make atonement for himself (his own sins) and for his household and for all the congregation of Israel.

“Any man from the house of Israel who kills an ox or lamb or goat in the camp, or kills it outside the camp

“Then you shall say to them, ‘Any man from the house of Israel or any of the strangers living temporarily among you, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice

‘Any man from the house of Israel, or any stranger living temporarily among you, who eats any blood, against that person I shall set My face and I will cut him off from his people [excluding him from the atonement made for them].

But if a priest buys a slave as his property with his money, the slave may eat the holy thing, and those who are born in the priest’s house; they may eat his food.

But if a priest’s daughter is a widow or divorced, and has no child, and returns to her father’s house as in her youth, she shall eat her father’s food; but no layman shall eat it.

“Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them, ‘Any man of the house of Israel or any stranger in Israel who presents his offering, whether to fulfill any of their vows or as any of their freewill (voluntary) offerings which they presented to the Lord as a burnt offering—

‘If a man sells a house in a walled city, then his right of redemption remains valid for a full year after its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year.

But if it is not redeemed for him within a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently and irrevocably to the purchaser throughout his generations. It does not revert back in the Year of Jubilee.

Therefore, what is [purchased] from the Levites may be redeemed [by a Levite], and the house that was sold in the city they possess reverts in the Year of Jubilee, for the houses in the Levite cities are their [ancestral] property among the Israelites.

‘If a man consecrates his house as sacred to the Lord, the priest shall appraise it as either good or bad; as the priest appraises it, so shall it stand.

If the one who consecrates his house should wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of your valuation price to it, so that it may be his.