Leviticus 13:10

Summary

The verse describes the priest's diagnostic examination of a skin condition: he observes a white swelling on the skin that has turned the hair white, and identifies raw living flesh within that swelling. This is part of the procedural diagnostic criteria for skin conditions in Leviticus 13.

Key words

• ra'ah ("he will see", H7200G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun in the previous verse; marks the priest's act of visual examination as the next step in the procedure.
• se'et ("a swelling", H7613) — feminine singular noun, appears twice (lines 7 and 21), naming the specific skin condition being assessed both at the start and end of the verse, framing the whole description.
• hafekhah ("it has turned", H2015) — qal perfect, third person feminine, describing a completed change of state (the hair having turned white), grammatically agreeing with the feminine se'et.
• michyat ("a raw spot of...", H4241) — feminine singular construct noun, grammatically linked to basar ("flesh", H1320) that follows, forming the phrase "raw spot of flesh."
• chai ("living", H2416A) — masculine singular adjective modifying basar ("flesh"), specifying that the flesh exposed is living tissue, not necrotic.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav construction ve-ra'ah ("and he will see"), continuing a sequence of priestly actions established earlier in the chapter. The subject is explicit: ha-kohen ("the priest", H3548). The interjection hinneh ("there!", H2009) introduces the object of observation with immediacy, a common device in Hebrew descriptive/legal narrative to mark what comes into view.

The described condition has two components joined by ve ("and"): first, se'et levanah ba-'or ("a white swelling in the skin"), and second, a clause built on the pronoun hi' ("it", referring back to the swelling) followed by the perfect verb hafekhah ("it has turned") governing se'ar lavan ("hair white"). The construct phrase michyat basar chai ("raw spot of living flesh") is grammatically bound (construct state) so that "raw spot" and "flesh" form a single conceptual unit, further specified by the adjective chai ("living"). The final phrase ba-se'et ("in the swelling") closes the verse by locating this raw flesh spatially within the same se'et named at the outset, creating a structural inclusio.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew michyat basar chai ("raw spot of living flesh") with a different syntactic structure: apo tou hygious tēs sarkos tēs zōsēs ("from the healthy [part] of the living flesh"), introducing the Greek term for "healthy" (ὑγιοῦς) not directly present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate's caro viva ("living flesh") corresponds closely to the Hebrew basar chai, but the Vulgate frames the appearance of this flesh with apparuerit ("it shall have appeared"), a verb of appearing not explicitly present in the Hebrew, which simply states location (ba-se'et, "in the swelling") without a verb of appearance in this clause.