Leviticus 13:8

Summary

The verse describes a priest re-examining a skin condition: if he observes that the mispachat ("skin rash", H4556) has spread on the skin, he must declare the person tzara'at ("a serious skin disease", H6883) — ritually unclean. The sentence follows a two-step sequence of priestly observation and legal declaration.

Key words

• ra'ah ("he will see", H7200G) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain; the priest's act of visual inspection.
• pasetah ("it has spread", H6581) — qal perfect, feminine, describing a completed spreading of the condition observed by the priest.
• mispachat ("skin rash", H4556) — feminine singular noun, the subject that has spread; a specific term for a surface skin eruption, distinct from tzara'at.
• tim'o ("he will declare unclean", H2930A) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect with 3ms suffix "him"; the priest's formal legal act, distinct from a simple descriptive statement.
• tzara'at ("a serious skin disease", H6883) — feminine singular noun, the technical classification pronounced over the case, reinforced by the closing pronoun hi' ("it", H1931).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of narrative perfects linked by the vav (H9001/H9002): ra'ah ("he will see") → hinneh ("there!", H2009) introducing a vivid, almost eyewitness clause → pasetah ("it has spread") → tim'o ("he will declare unclean"). This structure moves from observation to verbal declaration without any intervening explanation, mirroring a procedural, almost legal record. The object of ra'ah is not stated; the priest simply "sees," and what he sees is expressed through the hinneh clause describing the mispachat spreading ba'or ("in the skin", H5785/H9003). The final clause, tzara'at hi' ("it is tzara'at"), is a nominal sentence with no verb, functioning as a formal verdict rather than a narrated action — grammatically distinct from the preceding perfect verbs.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds an explicit object, αὐτὸν ("him"), to the verb of seeing (ὄψεται αὐτὸν, "he will see him"), where the Hebrew ra'ah has no stated object. The LXX also renders mispachat as σημασία ("sign/mark"), a broader term than the Hebrew's specific skin-rash noun. The Vulgate text given here, et immunditiae condemnabitur ("and he will be condemned to uncleanness"), is a truncated fragment covering only the declaration portion of the verse, not the full observation-and-spread sequence present in the Hebrew and LXX.