Leviticus 13:44

Summary

The verse states that a person affected by tzaru'a ("has a serious skin disease", H6879) is unclean, and that the priest must formally pronounce him unclean because the disease is located on his head. The Hebrew repeats the pronoun "he" twice for emphasis and uses a doubled verb form to stress the certainty of the priest's declaration.

Key words

• tza.Ru.a' ("[who] has a serious skin disease", H6879) — qal passive participle, describing the man as one affected by the condition, not naming the disease itself but his resulting state.
• ta.Me' ("[is] unclean", H2931) — adjective describing ritual status, paired with the pronoun hu' ("he", H1931) to form a short, emphatic clause: "unclean he [is]."
• ta.Me' / ye.tam.me.'E.nu ("surely... he will declare unclean him", H2930A) — infinitive absolute followed by the piel imperfect of the same root, a grammatical doubling that intensifies the certainty or emphasis of the action, often rendered "he shall surely declare him unclean."
• nig.'O ("his plague", H5061) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, meaning "the plague/infection of his," linking the condition specifically to the location just named.
• ro.Sh-o ("his head", H7218A) — construct noun with suffix, specifying the location of the infection.

What the text says

The verse opens with two short nominal clauses built on repetition of the pronoun hu' ("he", H1931): "ish-tzaru'a hu" ("a man diseased he [is]") and "tame hu" ("unclean he [is]"). This structure, common in Hebrew for emphatic identification, states the man's condition and his resulting status as two parallel, terse declarations rather than a single flowing sentence.

The following clause uses an infinitive absolute of the root tm' (H2930A) immediately before the finite piel imperfect of the same root, ye.tam.me.'E.nu ("he will declare him unclean"). This infinitive-plus-finite-verb pairing is a grammatical device that reinforces the verb it accompanies — here underscoring the definiteness of the priest's action ("the priest") in official pronouncement, rather than the disease itself. The clause closes by placing the location, "on his head" (be-rosho), before "his plague" (nig'o), both in construct form with pronominal suffixes, tying the infection grammatically and spatially to the head.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate condenses the passage into a relative clause — "whoever has been stained with leprosy and has been separated at the priest's judgment" — which does not preserve the doubled "he is... he is" structure or the infinitive-plus-verb emphasis found in the Hebrew. The provided LXX segment begins directly with the verb "he will defile/declare unclean" (μιανεῖ) and the priest's action, without the initial two nominal clauses ("a man diseased... unclean") that open the Hebrew text.