Leviticus 12:2

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to tell the Israelites a case law: when a woman conceives and gives birth to a male child, she is ritually unclean for seven days, comparable to the period of impurity during her menstrual cycle.

Key words

• da.Ber ("speak", H1696G) — piel imperative, an intensive command form opening the divine speech to Moses.
• taz.Ri.a' ("she will bear a child", H2232) — hiphil imperfect, a causative form literally meaning "to cause seed" or "to produce/sow seed," describing the onset of pregnancy.
• ta.me.'Ah ("she will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), linking this clause to the birth event as a resulting state; establishes uncleanness at the start of the verse's legal statement.
• ni.Dat ("menstrous impurity of", H5079) construct with de.vo.Tah ("being unwell", H1738) — a construct chain meaning "the impurity of her indisposition," forming the comparative standard for the postpartum uncleanness.
• tit.Ma' ("she will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, closing the verse with the same root as ta.me.'Ah, framing the seven-day period.

What the text says

The verse opens with the imperative da.Ber ("speak", H1696G) followed by the infinitive le.mor ("saying", H0559), a standard formula introducing direct divine speech to be relayed to be.nei Yis.ra.'El ("the people of Israel", H1121G/H3478). The legal case is framed by the conditional particle ki ("that/if", H3588A) attached to 'i.shah ("a woman", H0802G), followed by two verbs in sequence: taz.Ri.a' ("she will bear a child", H2232), a hiphil imperfect denoting the causative act of conceiving, and yal.dah ("she will bear", H3205), a qal sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain to describe the birth itself of a za.khar ("a male", H2145).

The uncleanness is stated twice, using the same root tm' (H2930A) in two different verbal forms: ta.me.'Ah (sequential perfect) near the start of the impurity clause, and tit.Ma' (imperfect) at the very end of the verse. Between these two occurrences sits the comparative clause built on the construct chain ki ymei niddat devotah ("like the days of the menstrous impurity of her being unwell"), which uses ni.Dat (H5079) construct with the infinitive de.vo.Tah (H1738, "being unwell," with third-person feminine suffix "her"). This construct chain does not state a fixed number of days itself but points back to the seven days already mentioned, establishing the postpartum impurity as parallel in kind and duration to menstrual impurity.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders taz.Ri.a' (hiphil, "she will bear/cause seed", H2232) with σπερματισθῇ ("be seeded" or "impregnated"), a passive construction differing from the Hebrew's active causative form. The Vulgate similarly shifts the grammatical voice with suscepto semine ("having received seed"), an ablative absolute construction, rather than the Hebrew's finite verb form for the woman's action.