Leviticus 13:26

Summary

This verse describes a priest's examination of a skin condition: if he sees no white hair in the bright spot, if the spot is not lower than the surrounding skin, and if it appears dull, the priest isolates the person for seven days.

Key words

• yir'ennah ("he will see it", H7200G) — qal imperfect with 3rd person feminine suffix; frames the whole verse as a conditional act of visual inspection by the priest.
• beheret ("bright spot", H0934) — feminine singular noun naming the skin mark under examination; recurs across Leviticus 13 as the diagnostic object.
• she'ar lavan ("hair... white", H8181 + H3836) — masculine noun plus adjective; its absence (marked by 'eyn, H0369) is one of the three negative conditions checked.
• shefalah ("deep", H8217) — feminine adjective describing the spot's relation to the skin; negated by a second occurrence of 'eyn with its own suffix, producing "it is not deep."
• hisgiro ("he will shut him up", H5462) — hiphil (causative) form with sequential vav marking the narrative outcome: the priest's causative act of isolating the person follows once all three conditions are confirmed.

What the text says

The Hebrew builds a conditional chain introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A) governing the priest's inspection (yir'ennah). Three coordinated clauses follow, each concerning a physical feature of the beheret: the absence of white hair (using the existential negator 'eyn, H0369, in construct form), the spot not being shefalah ("deep", H8217) relative to the surrounding 'or ("skin", H5785), and the spot being khehah ("dull", H3544). The repetition of 'eyn with different pronominal suffixes ('eyn-...-nah, H9034 and H9044) ties each negated condition specifically back to the beheret, a grammatical patterning not preserved in translation, which simply lists "no white hair" and "not deeper" as parallel facts.

The apodosis begins with the narrative vav (H9001) attached to hisgiro, a hiphil sequential perfect indicating that the priest's isolating action is the direct consequence of the three prior observations holding true. The construct number shiv'at yamim ("seven of days", H7651 + H3117G) closes the verse, specifying the duration of the isolation period as a bound phrase rather than a simple adjective-noun pair.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders khehah ("dull", H3544) as ἀμαυρόν ("faint/dim"), consistent with the Hebrew sense of diminished visibility. The Vulgate paraphrases more broadly, speaking of the "color of the hairs" not being changed (pilorum color non fuerit immutatus) and the "appearance of the leprosy" (lepræ species) being obscure, introducing the term lepra not present as a lexical item in the Hebrew, which instead refers only to the beheret ("bright spot").