Leviticus 15:22

Summary

Leviticus 15:22 establishes that anyone who touches an object on which a menstruating woman has sat becomes ritually impure. That person must wash their clothes, bathe in water, and remain impure until evening.

Key words

• no.Ge.a' ("[one who] touches", H5060) — qal participle, masculine singular. The participle form frames the subject as "the one touching" — describing an ongoing category of person rather than a single completed action.
• te.Shev ("she will sit", H3427) — qal imperfect, third person feminine. The imperfect verb marks this as a habitual or potential action ("whenever/if she sits"), not a single fixed event.
• ke.Li ("article/object", H3627) — masculine singular noun, in construct chain with khol ("every/any"). Combined with khol, it produces "any object" — a broad, unrestricted category.
• yekhaBes ("he will wash", H3526) — piel imperfect, third person masculine. The piel (intensive) stem indicates a thorough act of washing, applied specifically to garments (begaDav, "his garments," H899).
• taMe' ("he will be unclean", H2930) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), third masculine. This form continues the narrative sequence, marking impurity as the final consequential state after the washing actions.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional chain introduced by ve.khol.ha.noGea' ("and everyone who touches"), using the qal participle noGea' to designate a class of person defined by an action — contact with an object. The object itself is specified by be.khol.keLi ("in/on any article"), doubling the universalizing term khol ("all/every") already used for the toucher, which broadens the scope of the law to any type of furniture or object, not a specific one.

The relative clause asher-teShev 'aLav ("which she sits on it") uses the imperfect teShev, expressing a recurring or potential situation — the object becomes relevant whenever the woman sits on it, not tied to one specific instance. The suffix -av ("it/him," H9033) attached to 'aLav ("on it") anaphorically refers back to keLi ("object"), grammatically closing the relative clause.

The consequence unfolds through two verbs in sequence: yekhaBes begaDav ("he will wash his garments") uses the piel stem, an intensive form applied consistently in this text to the washing of clothing. This is followed by a sequential perfect chain, ve.raChatz ba.maYim ("and he will wash with water") and ve.taMe' 'ad-ha'Arev ("and he will be unclean until the evening"), marking a fixed temporal sequence: washing of garments, bodily washing, and a state of impurity lasting until a specific time marker (ha'Arev, "the evening").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders keLi ("article/object", H3627) as σκεύους ("vessel/object"), and specifies λούσεται ὕδατι ("he will bathe with water") explicitly, matching the Hebrew ve.raChatz ba.maYim. The Vulgate compresses the phrase keLi asher-teShev 'alav into lectum ejus ("her bed"), a narrower term than the Hebrew's general "any object," which the Hebrew and LXX both express as an unrestricted category.