Leviticus 13:5

Summary

The verse describes the priest's second examination of a skin condition on the seventh day. If the affected area (nega, "plague", H5061) has remained visually unchanged and has not spread on the skin, the priest isolates the person for an additional seven days.

Key words

• ra.'A.hu ("he will see it", H7200G) — qal sequential perfect with 3rd person suffix; continues the narrative sequence from the previous verse, indicating a follow-up action tied to what came before.
• 'a.Mad ("it has stayed", H5975G) — qal perfect describing a completed state; the plague is presented as having remained static, framed as an accomplished fact by the time of the examination.
• be.'ei.Na.v ("in his eyes/view", H5869A) — feminine dual construct noun with suffix; literally "in his two eyes," an idiom meaning the priest's own visual assessment is the standard of judgment.
• fa.Sah ("it has spread", H6581) — qal perfect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); marks the absence of change as the deciding criterion.
• his.gi.R.o ("he will shut him up", H5462) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect with suffix; the priest causes the confinement, a deliberate administrative action rather than a spontaneous state.

What the text says

The sentence chain is built on two sequential perfects (ve.ra.'A.hu... ve.his.gi.R.o), a verb form that in Biblical Hebrew narrative continues a sequence of actions following an initial verb form (here linked to the process described in the preceding verses). This grammatical structure ties the priest's re-examination (word 2) directly to his subsequent action of isolating the person (word 25) as the next step in an ongoing procedure, not as an isolated event.

Between these two sequential verbs sits a description introduced by hi.Neh ("there!", H2009), an interjection that shifts the narrative into the priest's direct field of perception — the reader sees what the priest sees. Within this description, two qal perfects express completed states: the plague "has stayed" ('a.Mad) be.'ei.Na.v, literally "in his eyes" (H5869A, dual form), and it "has not spread" (lo' fa.Sah). The dual noun for "eyes" grammatically marks the judgment as bound to the priest's own visual perception rather than an objective external measure.

The numeral shiv.'At ("seven", H7651) stands in construct with ya.Mim ("days", H3117G), producing "seven of days," and is qualified by she.Nit ("a second", H8145), a feminine ordinal marking this as the second instance of a seven-day period, distinguishing it from an initial period mentioned earlier in the passage.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders be.'ei.Na.v ("in his eyes", H5869A) as ἐναντίον αὐτοῦ ("before him"), losing the specific "eyes" imagery of the Hebrew dual noun. The Vulgate similarly abstracts this phrase, stating "si quidem lepra ultra non creverit" ("if indeed the leprosy has not grown further"), which reformulates the visual-perception idiom as a general statement about non-growth, without a direct equivalent to be.'ei.Na.v.