Leviticus 13:55

Summary

Leviticus 13:55 describes the priest's second inspection of a garment or fabric after it has been washed for a suspected mold/mildew affliction (nega, H5061). If the affected spot has not changed its appearance and has not spread, the item is declared unclean and must be burned, because the condition is identified as pechetet (H6356), regardless of which part of the fabric is affected.

Key words

• hukkabbes ("was washed out", H3526H) — an infinitive form used after 'acharei ("after", H0310A) to mark the time reference: the examination happens following the washing.
• ra'ah ("he will see", H7200G) — sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain of legal procedure; the priest performs a repeated act of inspection.
• 'eino ("its eye", H5869I) — construct noun with pronominal suffix; idiomatic for "its appearance/color," used to state whether the mark has changed visually.
• pashah ("it has spread", H6581) — perfect verb, negated by lo' (H3808), marking completed non-spreading as one of the two negative conditions required for the unclean verdict.
• pechetet ("a mildew/corrosion", H6356) — feminine singular noun naming the specific technical category of the affliction once the verdict is rendered.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional chain introduced by the narrative ve- (H9001) attached to ra'ah, placing the priest's inspection after the washing event marked by the infinitive hukkabbes. Two negated perfect clauses follow — lo'-hafakh ("it has not turned/changed") applied to 'eino ("its eye/appearance") and lo'-fasah ("it has not spread") — both stating conditions that remain unresolved even after washing. Because these two negative conditions hold, the adjective tame' ("unclean", H2931) is pronounced using the independent pronoun hu' ("it", H1931) for emphasis, followed by the imperfect tisrefennu ("you will burn it", H8313), a second-person command embedded in an otherwise third-person description.

The clause naming the condition as pechetet uses the feminine pronoun hi' to match the feminine noun, and the final two prepositional phrases, be-qorachto ("in its baldness") and ve-gabachto ("in its baldness/forehead"), reuse terms whose base meaning elsewhere concerns head-baldness, applied here to describe worn or thinned areas of the fabric — a nuance obscured when these words are translated simply as "front" or "back."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew's final phrase, "in its qorachto or in its gabachto" (bald-spot/bald-forehead terminology), diverges sharply from the LXX, which reads "ἐστήρισται ἐν τῷ ἱματίῳ ἢ ἐν τῷ στήμονι ἢ ἐν τῇ κρόκῃ" ("it is fixed in the garment, or in the warp, or in the woof"), introducing weaving-terminology absent from the Hebrew. The Vulgate instead renders the phrase as "in superficie vestimenti, vel per totum" ("on the surface of the garment, or throughout"), avoiding the baldness imagery altogether and giving a more generalized description of the affected area.