Leviticus 13:31

Summary

The verse describes the priest's second diagnostic criterion for netek ("scall/scab", H5424), a skin condition on the head or beard: if the affected spot does not appear deeper than the surrounding skin and contains no black hair, the priest isolates the person for seven days rather than immediately declaring impurity.

Key words

• yir'eh ("he will see", H7200G) — qal imperfect, expressing the priest's ongoing act of visual examination that triggers the conditional clause.
• Neteg ("scall", H5424) — masculine singular noun naming the specific skin affliction being diagnosed, repeated twice in the verse (once in construct with nega', "plague of").
• mar'ehu ("its appearance", H4758 + suffix) — construct noun with 3rd person suffix, referring back to the neteg; forms part of the negated clause 'ein mar'ehu 'amoq ("its appearance is not deep").
• 'ein ("not/there is not", H0369) — used twice (lines 12 and 22), each time negating a noun clause; a construct-state negative particle that functions like "there is no X."
• hisgir ("he will shut up/isolate", H5462) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, marking the priest's resulting action: causing the person to be confined, continuing the narrative sequence begun with yir'eh.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional sentence introduced by ve-khi ("and if", H9002+H3588A), followed by two negated observations joined by ve-hinneh ("and behold", H2009): first that the mar'eh ("appearance") of the neteg is not 'amoq ("deep", H6013) beyond the skin, and second that no se'ar shachor ("black hair", H8181+H7838) is present in it. Both negations use 'ein (H0369), a particle that negates existence rather than an action, giving the clause a static, descriptive quality — the text is reporting an absence, not denying an event. The apodosis begins with the sequential ve-hisgir (H5462), a hiphil form indicating that the priest causes confinement; this verb continues the narrative chain from yir'eh, showing that the examination directly produces the isolation action for shiv'at yamim ("seven days", H7651+H3117G).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders se'ar shachor ("black hair") as θρὶξ ξανθίζουσα ("yellowish/golden hair"), differing from the Hebrew's specification of black. The Vulgate's clause "et capillum nigrum" ("and black hair") lacks an explicit negation corresponding to the Hebrew 'ein bo ("there is not in it"), producing a reading where black hair appears to be affirmed rather than denied, unlike the Hebrew and the Spanish SBLIBRE, which both preserve the negative sense ("no tenga pelo negro").