In another short aliyah, the Torah, in the sixth aliyah of Parasha Tazria, begins discussing tza'raat of the clothing. This comes, of course, after a long discussion of tza'raat of the body, including the skin, the head, and the beard.
In a post recently about Purim, I discussed how clothing being merely an external adornment is the exact opposite of what it truly is. There is an idea that prior to the "sin" of eating fruit of the Etz Chaim, human beings essentially existed as pure spiritual entities, perhaps with a body to house it, but those beings were pure soul and were perhaps blissfully unaware of those bodies. (I'm totally extemporizing here on an idea that's not my own.) After the "sin"/act, these spiritual beings became aware of their bodies, and that they had an "exterior" to their soul in the first place. Therefore, the "nakedness" Torah describes in that famous story from Bireishit isn't actually representative of the unclothed internal existence - it is pure and unfettered externality.
As we learned in relation the Purim story, the reason why clothes are so crucial to that saga is because clothing, as a layer on top of the external body, actually represents a return to the internal. The clothing, perhaps denigrated by some as not being important because it is so materialistic, now inherits extreme importance as being emblematic not of the body but of the soul which lies two layers beneath (at least for some parts of the soul, "beneath" and inside the body) and which corresponds to the soul.
So, the Torah starts with afflictions of the skin and grows more "serious." A "deep green or deep red in the garment," as so bluntly noted in VaYikra 13:48, becomes so much more than a stain on the clothing - it is directly related to a deep stain of the soul.
And how do we know that such an affliction is significantly more serious than had it "merely" been on the skin or beard? It is only with this type of affliction that the individual must call out to anyone around them "tamei, tamei" (afflicted/impure/contaminated/some other better translation), which he or she did not have to do had "only" their body been affected.
Why? With lessons brought down by others, the answer is clear: because tza'raat on the body, while it sounds bad, only represents an external spiritual infliction, whereas tza'raat of the clothing, is much nearer to an affliction of the soul and its essence. So much so that even being around this spiritual energy is highly and potently dangerous.
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