Deuteronomy 23:10

Summary

The verse addresses a hypothetical case: if there is among the community a man who is not tahor ("clean", H2889) because of a nighttime occurrence, he must go outside the camp and may not come into the middle of it. It establishes a conditional rule involving temporary exclusion from the camp's interior space.

Key words

• ki ("if", H3588A) — subordinating particle opening the conditional clause, setting up the entire verse as a hypothetical case.
• tahor ("clean", H2889) — masculine singular adjective describing the state the man lacks; negated by lo' ("not", H3808) immediately before it.
• keреh ("a happening of", H7137) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to the following word laylah ("night", H3915) to form "a happening of night."
• yatza' ("he will go out", H3318G) — qal sequential perfect, marked by the narrative vav (H9001), continuing the action-chain from the condition to its consequence.
• tavokh ("[the] middle of", H8432) — masculine singular construct noun, joined to ha-machaneh ("the camp", H4264) to specify the innermost part of the camp, contrasted with mi-chutz ("from the outside", H2351) earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional (ki) sentence with a nested relative clause. The main condition is "if there will be among you a man" (yihyeh vekha 'ish), and the relative clause 'asher lo' yihyeh tahor miqreh-laylah specifies the reason: "who will not be clean because of a happening of night." The construct chain qereh-laylah ("happening of night") does not itself name the cause explicitly beyond "night," leaving the nature of the nocturnal event described only by this construct pairing rather than by an explicit noun for the substance or act involved.

The consequence is expressed through two verbs linked by the narrative vav: first yatza' ("he will go out"), a qal sequential perfect continuing the logical sequence from the conditional clause, and then lo' yavo' ("he will not come"), a qal imperfect with negation. The spatial contrast is built through prepositional phrases: 'el-mi-chutz la-machaneh ("to from-outside of-the camp") describes the destination outside, while 'el-tokh ha-machaneh ("into the middle of the camp") describes the interior he must not enter. The double preposition 'el-mi-chutz is a Hebrew construction combining "to" and "from outside" to indicate motion toward the exterior zone.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the cause as ῥύσεως αὐτοῦ νυκτός ("his flow of night"), introducing the word "flow" (ῥύσις) where the Hebrew construct qereh-laylah ("happening of night") does not itself specify a bodily flow. The LXX also omits the second clause about not entering "the middle of the camp," ending instead with "and he will go out into the camp" (εἰς τὴν παρεμβολήν), which differs from the Hebrew's explicit contrast between going outside and not entering the interior. The Vulgate uses nocturno pollutus sit somnio ("polluted by a nocturnal dream"), introducing "dream" (somnio) as the specified cause, a term not present in the Hebrew construct phrase itself.