Leviticus 14:3

Summary

The verse describes the priest going outside the camp to examine a person previously diagnosed with a skin disease. The text states that if the priest observes that the skin affliction has healed, this is reported as a completed fact within the narrative sequence.

Key words

• ya.Tza' ("he will go out", H3318) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun in prior verses; grammatically it advances the story rather than opening a new scene.
• ra.'Ah ("he will see", H7200) — qal sequential perfect, parallel in form to ya.Tza'; the priest's "seeing" is presented as the next link in the same chain of actions.
• nir.Pa' ("it has been healed", H7495) — niphal perfect. The niphal stem marks the healing as something that happened to the skin disease, without naming an agent; the perfect aspect marks it as a completed state at the moment the priest looks.
• ne.ga'- ("plague of", H5061) construct with ha.Tzara.'at ("the serious skin disease", H6883) — a construct chain, "the plague of the skin-disease," treating the affliction almost as a discrete entity attached to the disease category.
• tza.Ru.a' ("[one who] had a serious skin disease", H6879) — qal passive participle, functioning as a substantive ("the afflicted one"); it designates the person by the state inflicted on him rather than by a proper action he performs.

What the text says

The verse is built as two paired clauses using the narrative vav + sequential perfect construction: ve-ya.Tza' ("and he will go out") and ve-ra.'Ah ("and he will see"), both governed by ha.Ko.Hen ("the priest", H3548) as subject. This grammatical parallelism ties the priest's movement outside the camp directly to his subsequent inspection, presenting them as two steps of one continuous procedure rather than separate events.

The core observation is introduced by hi.Neh ("there!", H2009), an interjection that marks a shift into the priest's direct perception — what he sees is reported almost as a quotation of his own observation. What he perceives is expressed through the niphal verb nir.Pa', which describes the skin-disease's plague (ne.ga'- ha.Tzara.'at, a construct chain) as having reached a completed, passive state of healing, with no grammatical subject performing the healing. The afflicted person is referred to at the end not by a personal action but by the passive participle ha.Tzaru.a', literally "the one struck," used substantively as "the afflicted."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nir.Pa' with the present tense iatai ("is healed"), differing from the Hebrew niphal perfect, which frames the healing as an already-completed state rather than an ongoing one. The Vulgate restructures the verse into a subordinate temporal clause ("cum invenerit... mundatam" — "when he finds it to be cleansed"), omitting the separate clause corresponding to ve-ra.'Ah ("and he will see") and using mundatam ("cleansed") rather than a term corresponding directly to "healed."