Leviticus 13:46

Summary

Leviticus 13:46 states that for as long as the skin affliction remains on the afflicted person, that person is unclean, and stipulates that they must dwell alone, with their dwelling place located outside the camp.

Key words

• nega' ("plague", H5061) — masculine singular noun with the definite article (ha-, H9009), referring to the specific skin affliction discussed in the surrounding chapter; it is the grammatical subject of "is on him."
• yitma' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, indicating an ongoing or repeated state tied to the duration expressed by kol-yemei ("all the days of," H3605/H3117G).
• tame' hu' ("unclean he [is]", H2931/H1931) — adjective plus independent personal pronoun, forming a separate clause that restates and emphasizes the unclean status already declared by the verb yitma'.
• badad ("alone", H0910) — adverbial noun modifying the verb yeshev ("he will dwell", H3427), specifying the manner of dwelling rather than merely its location.
• mo.sha.vo ("his dwelling", H4186 + H9023) — construct noun with third-person suffix, syntactically resuming and specifying what has just been described as "outside the camp," acting almost as an apposition to the preceding prepositional phrase.

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel statements about status followed by two parallel statements about location and manner. The first half opens with kol-yemei 'asher ha-nega' bo ("all the days of which the plague [is] in him"), a temporal construct chain that frames everything else as valid only for the duration of the affliction. This is followed by two clauses affirming uncleanness: first the finite verb yitma' ("he will be unclean"), then the nominal clause tame' hu' ("unclean is he"). The repetition — a verbal statement followed by an adjectival/pronominal one — is a feature of the Hebrew that does not require duplication in translation; it reinforces the declaration of status through two grammatically distinct constructions rather than adding new information.

The second half shifts to conduct: badad yeshev ("alone he will dwell") uses the adverb badad ("alone", H0910) to describe the manner of dwelling, and this is followed by a second, independent statement of location: michutz lamachaneh moshavo ("outside the camp is his dwelling"). The final noun moshavo ("his dwelling", H4186) with the possessive suffix stands as its own short nominal clause, restating the idea of "dwelling outside" using a noun instead of a verb, paralleling the double-statement structure already seen with the uncleanness declaration.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew's double statement of uncleanness (yitma' tame' hu') more compactly as a single participial clause, "being unclean he will be" (ὢν ἀκάθαρτος ἔσται), collapsing the two Hebrew clauses into one syntactic unit. The Vulgate similarly compresses the passage, rendering the temporal clause and both uncleanness statements as "omni tempore quo leprosus est et immundus" ("for the whole time he is leprous and unclean"), omitting a distinct equivalent for badad ("alone", H0910) as a separate adverbial idea, though the sense of solitary dwelling is preserved through "solus habitabit."