פירוש על ויקרא 13:24

מחית המכוה IIEALED FLESH OF THE BURNT PART — sainement in old French The text means that when the burnt part was healed it turned into a bright spot variegated or evenly white (i.e. ‎'וכו‎‎ והיתה denotes “and the healed flesh became a white bright spot etc.”). The symptoms of cleanness or uncleanness of a burn and the symptoms of a boil are exactly similar. Why, then, has Scripture mentioned them separately (in two paragraphs, instead of saying ואדם כי יהיה בעור בשרו שחין ומכוה )? To tell us that they cannot be combined one with the other to make up the minimum size of a spot which is a symptom of leprosy — if, e. g., there develops a leprous spot the size of a half of a גריס (a גריס is a half-bean; חצי גריס is a half of this), in a boil (שחין), and one of the size of a half גריס in a burn (מכוה), they do not come under the law of a full ‎‎‏ גריס(the minimum size for an unclean spot) (Chullin 8a).

או בשר, “or when flesh, etc.;” there is no difference between how halachah treats either a burn on the skin or a boil caused through internal swelling. The reason, why in spite of this, the Torah appears to treat it as two different phenomena, is because it wishes to teach that if either of these phenomena are present in smaller sizes than the minimum size to qualify as a plague, these two phenomena combined are not to be considered as big enough combined to result in our viewing them as evidence of a plague. This has been stated in the Talmud, tractate Chulin, folio 8. The minimum size is half the size of a certain kind of bean known as פנל.