and the same purification process mentioned in relation to tzaraath of human flesh is employed here. There are numerous limitations put on the tzaraath that afflicts houses: The house of a gentile is insusceptible to tzaraath. Only houses that possess four walls and four corners are susceptible. Similarly, only those houses that rest on the ground are susceptible, to the exclusion of those that are suspended above ground or are built on a boat. Tzaraath only affects houses that are built entirely out of stones, wood and clay plaster. If any of the four walls are built or internally overlaid with marble, natural outcropping of rock, brick or earthen soil, that wall is insusceptible to tzaraath, and a house cannot be rendered impure unless all four walls are susceptible. Two storey houses are treated as two distinct houses and the beams that serve as the floor of the upper storey and the roof of the lower storey are allowed to remain with whichever house remains. Houses are the only buildings that are susceptible to tzaraath (not, for example, barns or cattle stalls) and only houses that exist within the region of land originally divided among the 12 tribes, because the verse refers to beis eretz achuzaschem (בית ארץ אחזתכם, "a house of the land of your inheritance"); this also excludes houses in Jerusalem, because it was not given as an inheritance to any one tribe, but rather held jointly by all of Israel.Tzaraath infections in houses were to be treated similarly harshly according to the biblical regulations, and didn't have any exceptions; stones showing the symptoms had to be removed, and the house had to be scraped, with the removed stones and scraped-off clay being cast into a rubbish heap outside the city, and if the infection returned once replacement stones were laid and daubed with clay, then the whole house had to be dismantled, with the rubble again going to the tip outside the city. Additionally, people who had been in a house while it was infected with tzaraath was considered ritually impure until the evening came, and anyone who had eaten or slept there had to also wash their clothes. Modern medical interpretations Tzaraath of the skin Scholars suspect that the descriptions of tzaraath of the skin actually refer to a number of different skin diseases,Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia which, owing to the undeveloped state of medical science at