Leviticus 13:15

Summary

The verse describes a priest examining exposed "living flesh" (raw skin tissue) within a skin-disease diagnostic procedure. After the visual inspection, the text declares this condition unclean through two short nominal clauses that state the diagnosis directly: the living flesh is unclean, and it is tzara'at.

Key words

• ra.'ah ("he will see", H7200G) — qal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain of priestly actions, here denoting the act of visual inspection.
• ba.Sar ha.Chai ("the living flesh", H1320 + H2416A) — noun with adjective, both definite; refers to exposed, unhealed skin tissue rather than a scar or covered area.
• ti.me.'o ("he will declare him unclean", H2930A) — piel sequential perfect with pronominal suffix "him"; the piel form marks a declarative/causative action, i.e., the priest actively pronounces the status, not merely observes it.
• ta.Me' hu' ("unclean it [is]", H2931 + H1931) — adjective plus independent pronoun, forming a verbless (nominal) clause of identification/classification.
• tza.Ra.'at hu' ("it is tzara'at", H6883 + H1931) — a second nominal clause, parallel in structure to the previous one, naming the specific condition.

What the text says

The verse opens with two verbs in sequential perfect (ra.'ah, "he will see"; ti.me.'o, "he will declare him unclean"), both continuing the narrative chain established earlier in the chapter. The first verb describes the priest's direct visual act upon "the flesh, the living" (et-ha.Basar ha.Chai), using the direct object marker 'et to mark this phrase as the object being seen. The second verb, in the piel stem, indicates that the priest's action is not passive observation but an official pronouncement — the piel here carries a declarative sense, "he declares him unclean," with the pronominal suffix -o ("him") referring back to the person examined.

After these two verbal clauses, the Hebrew shifts to nominal (verbless) syntax: ha.Basar ha.Chai tame' hu' — literally "the living flesh, unclean it [is]" — and then tzara'at hu' — "tzara'at it [is]." Both clauses use the independent pronoun hu' ("it/he") as a copula-like element joining subject and predicate, a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for stating classifications or identifications. This creates a rhetorical repetition: the condition is named twice, first by its physical description (unclean) and then by its technical designation (tzara'at), reinforcing the diagnostic verdict through parallel structure rather than through connecting particles.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second clause with a causal conjunction, ὅτι ἀκάθαρτός ἐστιν ("because/that it is unclean"), where the Hebrew has simple juxtaposition (tame' hu') without any connecting particle. The Vulgate restructures the passage more freely, introducing "sacerdotis judicio" ("by the priest's judgment") and "inter immundos reputabitur" ("shall be reckoned among the unclean"), phrasing not present as distinct lexical items in the Hebrew, and reversing the order of ideas by placing "caro enim viva" ("for living flesh") after the pronouncement of uncleanness rather than as the initial object of inspection.