Leviticus 15:17

Summary

Leviticus 15:17 states that any garment or hide upon which semen falls must be washed with water, and it remains unclean until evening. The verse establishes both the object affected (cloth or leather) and the required action and duration of impurity.

Key words

• beged ("garment", H0899B) — masculine singular noun, the first of two objects named as susceptible to contamination.
• 'or ("hide", H5785) — masculine singular noun, paired with beged via the repeated construct khol ("every", H3605), marking both nouns as totalities ("every garment and every hide").
• shikhvat-zara' ("a laying of seed", H7902 + H2233I) — a construct chain literally "the lying-down of seed," the technical expression for the substance causing the impurity; the construct form binds the two nouns into a single idiomatic unit.
• khubbas ("it will be washed", H3526H) — pual (intensive passive) sequential perfect, meaning the washing is done to the object by an unspecified agent, not that it washes itself.
• tame' ("it will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect, stating the resulting status after contact, continuing the narrative chain begun with ve ("and", H9001).

What the text says

The verse opens with a compound subject formed by two construct phrases, khol beged ("every [of] garment") and khol 'or ("every [of] hide"), joined by ve ("and", H9002). This construction treats fabric and leather items as a single class of objects subject to the same rule. The relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834A) specifies the condition: yihyeh ("it will be", H1961), a qal imperfect, describes what "will be" or "happens to be" upon it — namely shikhvat-zara' ("a laying of seed"), attached to the object via 'alav ("on it", H5921A + suffix "his/its").

The sequence then shifts from the imperfect condition to two consecutive perfects joined by the narrative ve: khubbas ("it will be washed", pual) and tame' ("it will be unclean", qal). This chain — condition (imperfect) followed by consequence (sequential perfects) — is a common structural pattern in this chapter, presenting the washing and the resulting impurity as sequential outcomes of the initial condition, both lasting 'ad ha-'arev ("until the evening", H5704 + H6153).

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders the passage as a single conditional statement — "the garment and skin which he shall have, he shall wash with water" — using quam habuerit rather than reproducing the Hebrew's two-part relative clause about semen specifically resting upon the item. The LXX (LXXSWETE) follows the Hebrew more closely with κοίτη σπέρματος ("bed/lying of seed"), matching the construct shikhvat-zara'.