Leviticus 13:50

Summary

The verse describes two sequential actions by the priest: examining the mark on a garment or item (previously introduced in the chapter) and then isolating it for a seven-day period. The syntax is built on two verbs in the sequential perfect, both governed grammatically by the same subject.

Key words

• ra'ah ("he will see", H7200) — qal stem, sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), third person masculine singular; denotes the priest's initial visual examination.
• kohen ("priest", H3548) — definite noun, the explicit subject of the first verb; the subject of the second verb is not restated but grammatically implied.
• nega ("plague", H5061) — masculine singular noun with definite article, repeated identically in both clauses to refer back to the same object.
• hisgir ("he will shut up", H5462) — hiphil (causative) stem, sequential perfect; contrasts with the simple qal of ra'ah, marking a shift from perception to causing an action (confinement).
• shiv'at yamim ("seven of days", H7651 + H3117) — cardinal number in construct state governing the plural noun yamim ("days"), forming the fixed duration phrase.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of two sequential-perfect verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): ra'ah ("he will see") and hisgir ("he will shut up"). This construction is typical of Hebrew case-law and narrative style, where each verb continues the action begun by the previous one under a single implied subject — here, ha-kohen ("the priest"), stated explicitly only with the first verb. The object, ha-nega ("the plague"), is repeated verbatim with the definite article in both clauses rather than replaced by a pronoun, a common feature of Hebrew legal prose that keeps the referent unambiguous across clauses.

The shift from the qal stem of ra'ah to the hiphil stem of hisgir marks a movement from the priest's perception (seeing) to a causative action (causing the object to be enclosed/isolated). The duration is expressed by the construct phrase shiv'at yamim, literally "seven of days," a standard way in Hebrew to express a bounded time period.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sentence with the noun ὁ ἱερεύς ("the priest") repeated explicitly before both verbs (ὄψεται ὁ ἱερεύς... ἀφοριεῖ ὁ ἱερεύς), where the Hebrew states kohen only once and leaves the subject of hisgir implicit. The Vulgate compresses the two clauses into a relative construction, "qui consideratam recludet" ("who, having considered it, will shut it up"), omitting any explicit mention of "priest" or repetition of "plague" within this verse, relying instead on the referent established earlier in the passage. The Hebrew's repeated nega in both clauses is not preserved as a repeated noun in the Vulgate, which uses only a participial pronoun ("consideratam").