Leviticus 15:11

Summary

The verse describes a hygiene rule concerning a person with a bodily discharge (zav, H2100H): if he touches someone without having rinsed his hands in water, the person touched must wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening.

Key words

• Khol ("every", H3605) — opens the clause as a universal quantifier: the rule applies to "everyone" who is touched, regardless of identity.
• ha-Zav ("the one discharging", H2100H) — a qal participle used substantively (with article), naming the subject not by a fixed noun but by his ongoing condition of discharge.
• yaDav ("his hands", H3027G) — dual form with pronominal suffix, referring specifically to both hands (not one), attached to the preceding subject of the clause.
• sha.Taf ("he has rinsed", H7857) — qal perfect, marking a completed (or in this negated case, uncompleted) action; negated by lo' ("not", H3808), it sets the condition triggering the consequence.
• ta.Me' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — final verb in a chain of sequential perfects (ve.khiBes, ve.raChatz, ve.taMe'), showing the ordered outcome: wash garments, bathe, become unclean until evening.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a conditional chain introduced by Khol 'asher ("everyone whom..."), followed by the verb yiga' ("he will touch", H5060, qal imperfect) governing the object clause "him" (bo, H9033). The clause "ve-yadav lo'-shataf ba-mayim" ("and his hands he has not rinsed in water") is attached without an explicit new subject marker, so the antecedent of "his hands" is carried from the immediately preceding subject, ha-zav. This syntactic proximity is what allows the sentence to be read as describing the discharging person's unwashed hands as the condition, rather than the hands of the person touched.

After this conditional clause, three verbs follow in sequential perfect form (ve-khibbes, ve-rachats, ve-tame'), a common Hebrew narrative construction that chains consequences in temporal order: washing garments, bathing in water, and finally becoming unclean until evening. The dual form of yadav ("hands") specifies that both hands are in view, though the text does not elaborate on the extent of the rinsing required beyond the verb shataf ("to rinse", H7857).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew leaves the antecedent of "his hands" to be inferred from clause order; the LXX and Vulgate resolve this explicitly by repeating the subject — LXX: ὁ γονορρυὴς ("the one with discharge") explicitly governs "his hands were not washed"; Vulgate: qui talis est ("he who is such") functions the same way. Additionally, where the Hebrew verb rachats ("he will wash/bathe", H7364) has no stated object, the LXX adds τὸ σῶμα ("the body"), specifying what is washed, while the Vulgate's lotus aqua ("washed with water") stays closer to the unspecified Hebrew form.