Leviticus 13:23

Summary

Leviticus 13:23 gives the conditional resolution to the priestly examination of a bright spot appearing where a boil had been: if the spot stays confined to its place and does not spread, it is identified as the scar of the boil, and the priest declares the person clean.

Key words

• ta'amod ("it will stay", H5975G) — qal imperfect, third feminine singular, referring to the baheret ("bright spot"); the imperfect aspect frames the condition as an open, ongoing situation to be observed rather than a single completed act.
• pasatah ("it has spread", H6581) — qal perfect, third feminine singular, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); the perfect marks this as a completed action being denied — the spot has not undergone spreading up to the point of examination.
• tzarevet ("scar of", H6867B) — feminine singular construct noun, grammatically bound to ha-shechin ("the boil", H7822) that follows, forming the phrase "scar of the boil."
• tihar'o ("he will declare pure", H2891) — piel sequential perfect, third masculine singular with third masculine singular suffix ("him"); the piel (intensive) stem denotes a declarative-performative act — the priest actively pronounces the status, not merely observes it.
• hi' ("it", H1931) — independent feminine personal pronoun, resumptively confirming that the tzarevet ("scar") is indeed identical with the baheret under examination.

What the text says

The verse is structured as a conditional clause (ve'im, "and if") followed by two verbal states describing the baheret ("bright spot", H0934): it "stays" (ta'amod, imperfect) tachtei-ha ("in its place", H8478I with pronominal suffix "its"), and it "has not spread" (lo' pasatah, perfect negated). The shift from imperfect to perfect within the same conditional protasis marks two different aspectual angles — ongoing containment versus the absence of a completed change — both converging on the same diagnostic outcome.

The apodosis identifies the spot with a construct chain, tzarevet ha-shechin ("scar of the boil"), reinforced by the pronoun hi' ("it") in emphatic position, syntactically underscoring the identification of the spot with a scar rather than an active disease. The sequence closes with ve-tihar'o ha-kohen ("and the priest shall declare him pure"), using a sequential (vav-consecutive) perfect that continues the narrative logic: once the two conditions (containment and non-spreading) are met, the declarative act by the priest follows as the syntactic and procedural consequence.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the closing clause as homo mundus erit ("the man will be clean"), shifting the grammatical subject from the priest performing a declarative action (as in the Hebrew ve-tihar'o ha-kohen, "the priest will declare him pure") to the man's resulting state of cleanness, without explicit mention of the priest as agent in that final clause. The LXX preserves the agentive structure with καθαριεῖ αὐτὸν ὁ ἱερεύς ("the priest will cleanse/declare him clean"), closer to the Hebrew's construction with the priest as subject.