Leviticus 14:38

Summary

The verse describes the priest's action after inspecting a house for a suspected contamination: he exits the house to its entrance, and then seals the house shut for a period of seven days.

Key words

• ya.Tza' ("he will go out", H3318G) — qal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain begun by the previous verse's actions, marking the priest's physical movement outward.
• ko.Hen ("priest", H3548) — masculine singular noun, the subject performing both actions in this verse.
• Pe.tach ("entrance of", H6607) — construct form, linking to ha.Bayit ("the house") to specify exactly where the priest stops: not fully outside, but at the threshold.
• his.Gir ("he will shut up", H5462) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; the causative stem indicates the priest actively causes the house to become closed/confined, not simply that it closes on its own.
• shiv.'At ("seven", H7651) — construct form governing ya.Mim ("days", H3117G), setting the fixed duration of the closure.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative ve ("and"): ya.Tza' ("he will go out") and his.Gir ("he will shut up"). This grammatical chain presents the actions as a continuous sequence following the priest's prior inspection inside the house. The first action moves the priest min- ("from") the interior of the house 'el- ("to") the Pe.tach ("entrance of") the house — a construct phrase that pinpoints the threshold rather than a general "outside." The second action, using the hiphil stem of his.Gir, expresses that the priest causes the house itself to be enclosed or shut, with 'et- marking "the house" as the direct object of this causative verb. The seven-day period is expressed through a construct chain, shiv.'At yamim, "seven of days," a standard Hebrew way of specifying duration.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint uses ἀφοριεῖ ("he will separate/set apart") to render his.Gir, which carries a nuance of demarcation or setting aside rather than the Hebrew's more direct sense of physically shutting or confining. The Vulgate's claudet ("he will shut") aligns closely with the Hebrew his.Gir. The Spanish SBLIBRE rendering, "cerrará la puerta y la dejará aislada" ("he will close the door and leave it isolated"), introduces the object "door" as what is closed, whereas the Hebrew text's direct object of his.Gir is ha.Bayit ("the house") itself, not the door.