Leviticus 14:40

Summary

The verse describes a procedural step in the diagnosis of a house affected by nega ("plague/mark", H5061): the priest issues a command, and unspecified agents remove the affected stones and dispose of them outside the city in an unclean place. The sentence is structured as a chain of sequential actions following a prior inspection.

Key words

• tzi.Vah ("he will command", H6680) — piel sequential perfect; the intensive stem marks an authoritative, formal act of ordering, not mere suggestion.
• chi.le.Tzu ("people will tear out", H2502A) — piel sequential perfect, third person plural with unspecified subject; the intensive form conveys forceful extraction of the stones, not simple removal.
• hish.Li.khu ("they will throw", H7993) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; grammatically marks that the agents cause the stones to be cast out, distinct from a passive "falling away."
• Na.ga' ("plague", H5061) — masculine singular noun with definite article, referring back to the specific mark already identified in the house.
• ta.Me' ("unclean", H2931) — adjective describing the destination place, not the stones themselves grammatically, though contextually linked to their removal.

What the text says

The verse is built as three sequential clauses joined by the narrative vav (H9001), each using the piel or hiphil sequential perfect: ve-tzi.Vah ("and he will command"), ve-chi.le.Tzu ("and they will tear out"), ve-hish.Li.khu ("and they will throw"). This chain structure presents the priest's command as the initiating act, followed by two actions performed by an unnamed plural subject — likely those assisting in the process, though the Hebrew does not name them explicitly, using only the third-person plural verb form.

The object of the tearing-out action is ha-'avaNim ("the stones", H0068G), further specified by the relative clause 'aSher baHen ha-Naga' ("which in them [is] the plague") — a construction using the preposition ba ("in the", H9003) with a feminine pronominal suffix Hen ("them", H9039) referring back grammatically to the stones. The final clause locates the disposal: 'el-miChutz laIr ("to outside of the city") and 'el-maKom taMe' ("to a place unclean"), using two parallel prepositional phrases with 'el (H0413), both marking destination.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ve-chi.le.Tzu ("they will tear out") as ἐξελοῦσιν τοὺς λίθους· ἔστιν ἡ ἁφή ("they will remove the stones; the mark is [there]"), splitting the Hebrew relative clause into a separate short statement rather than a subordinate clause. The Vulgate's erui lapides in quibus lepra est ("that the stones in which the leprosy is be plucked out") preserves the subordinate structure closer to the Hebrew relative clause with 'aSher. The BSB and SBL Spanish versions translate the sequential plural verbs as passive constructions ("be pulled out and thrown"; "quiten... y las tiren"), whereas the Hebrew verbs are active third-person plural without an expressed subject.