The Bible talks about all types of Tzara’at (leprosy) including Tzara’at that inflicts buildings. The Torah relates, “God spoke to Moses and Aaron saying: when you arrive to the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I will place Tzara’at affliction upon a house in the land of your possession…. the Cohen shall command, and they shall remove the stones that contain affliction, and they shall cast them outside the city in a contaminated place”.
The Midrash (Vayikra Rabba) tells us that after the Canaanites rejected three letters sent by Joshua offering them the option to make peace; the Canaanites knew that the Israelites were going to come to wage war and capture the land. At that point they hid their valuables in the walls of their property. After the Jews settled in the land, God inflicted the walls of the house with a plague of Tzara’at so that the Jewish owner would demolish the house and find the hidden treasure.
This seems somewhat odd. If the Canaanites felt confident about defending their country why did they hide their valuables in the walls? Yet if they did not feel confident about winning the war, they should have made peace?
The simple answer is that they did not want to make peace with the Israelites under any circumstances; making peace with the Israelites was an anathema to them. From the fact that they hid their valuables in the walls of their homes we may conclude, that they took a long-term view of the struggle. They felt confident that although they may loose the battle they would win the war. They were convinced that they would one day remove the Israelites and return to their homes and valuables. Any suffering that they had to endure in the interim was worth it, as long as they did not have to share their land in peace with the Israelites.
God’s reaction to this was: I will show the Israelites where the Canaanites valuables are hidden so that the Canaanites will loose from their stubborn refusal to make peace with the chosen people.
History has a knack of repeating itself. We have stretched out are hands to make peace, we took risks to make peace but our overtures have been repeatedly rejected. Peace with the Jews was not what they wanted. They want to conquer all of the land that God has given us and push us in to the sea, and Palestinian geography textbooks, and polls conducted in the Moslem world prove this. They are in it for the long term and they feel that they will eventually succeed in driving us out. They do not seem to care how much pain is inflicted or which means they use, all is justifiable in order to reach their evil end.
However, one thing they forget: God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. God looks after the Land and its people. They will not win. God will not let them win. In this time of trouble God will surely continue looking after the Land so that it should not be deceived by the tricks and falsehoods of its enemies. May God grant strength and vision to the leaders of Israel so that they should not be fooled by hollow promises of security, rather, they should have the wisdom and understanding to make the right decisions in accordance with the will of God.