Leviticus 14:41

Summary

The verse continues instructions for treating a house affected by tzara'at: the interior of the house is to be scraped all around, and the scraped-off material is to be carried outside the city and dumped in an unclean place.

Key words

• yakTzia' ("he will scrape", H7106A) — hiphil imperfect, third person singular, with no explicit subject stated; the causative stem indicates an action performed upon the house rather than by it.
• Bayit ("house"/"inside", H1004B/H1004O) — the noun appears twice: first as ha-Bayit ("the house") with the article, then as mi-Bayit ("from inside") without it, forming an idiomatic phrase meaning "on the interior."
• shafeKhu ("they will pour out", H8210G) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural; the shift to plural marks a change of grammatical subject from the earlier singular verb.
• hikTzu ("they have scraped off", H7096) — hiphil perfect, third person plural, describing the scraping as a completed action prior to the pouring out.
• ta.Me' ("unclean", H2931) — masculine singular adjective modifying maqom ("place", H4725), specifying the destination as ritually unclean.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by the narrative vav (item 9). The first clause, ve-et ha-Bayit yakTzia' mi-Bayit saviv ("and the house, he will scrape from inside, around"), places the object ha-Bayit ("the house") before the verb yakTzia', an unusual word order in Hebrew that gives emphasis to the house as the item being treated. The verb itself is singular with no stated subject, an impersonal construction often rendered as passive or generalized in translation ("the house shall be scraped").

The second clause switches to plural verbs: shafeKhu ("they will pour out") and hikTzu ("they have scraped off"). This shift from singular to plural subject is grammatically marked but not explained within the verse itself — the text does not specify who performs the scraping versus who performs the pouring, only that the actions are carried out by different grammatical subjects. The phrase 'el mi-chutz la-'ir ("to outside the city") uses a compound preposition structure ('el + min + chutz) meaning "to the outside of," directing the dust away from the city into maqom tame' ("an unclean place"), where the adjective tame' echoes the recurring purity terminology of the chapter.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew maintains the singular/plural verb alternation (yakTzia' singular, then shafeKhu/hikTzu plural), while the LXX uses plural verbs throughout (ἀποξύσουσιν, "they will scrape"), smoothing the grammatical shift found in the Hebrew. The Vulgate renders the first clause with an infinitive passive construction (radi, "to be scraped"), likewise leveling the impersonal singular into a general passive sense rather than preserving the Hebrew's abrupt subject change.