Leviticus 15:26

Summary

The verse extends the impurity rules of menstrual niddah (H5079) to a woman experiencing an abnormal or prolonged discharge (zov, H2101). Any bed she lies on or object she sits on during the days of this discharge becomes impure, following the same legal pattern established for ordinary menstrual impurity.

Key words

• zovah ("her discharge", H2101) — construct noun with pronominal suffix; refers to the abnormal or prolonged flow being regulated, distinct from ordinary menstruation.
• niddah ("menstrual impurity", H5079) — appears twice in construct form (mishkav niddatah, tum'at niddatah), serving as the reference point to which the abnormal discharge is compared.
• mishkav ("bed", H4904) — masculine singular construct, used three times; the repeated construct chains ("bed of her discharge," "bed of her impurity") link the two categories of impurity syntactically.
• tish.Kav / te.Shev ("she will lie" / "she will sit", H7901G, H3427) — qal imperfect verbs denoting repeated or habitual action, not a single instance.
• tum'ah ("uncleanness", H2932) — abstract feminine noun, paired with niddah in construct to state the legal status directly.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel clauses, each following the same grammatical pattern: a definite construct noun (kol-hamishkav, "every bed"; vekol-hakli, "and every article") followed by a relative clause with an imperfect verb (tishkav, teshev) describing repeated contact, and then a comparative clause introduced by the preposition ke- ("like", H9004) that equates the new situation to the established norm of niddah.

The construct chains are significant: mishkav zovah ("bed of her discharge") is explicitly likened to mishkav niddatah ("bed of her [menstrual] impurity"), and similarly tum'at niddatah ("uncleanness of her menstrual impurity") becomes the standard against which the impurity from the kli ("article", H3627) is measured. This double comparison shows that the Hebrew text treats the abnormal discharge (zov) as a distinct category from ordinary niddah, but assigns it identical legal consequences by explicit textual comparison rather than by treating the two terms as synonyms.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders both zov and niddah with the same Greek term, ἄφεδρος (used for tas hēmeras tēs rhyseōs and tēn koitēn tēs aphedrou), which does not preserve the Hebrew's distinct vocabulary for the two categories of discharge. The Vulgate condenses the entire verse into a single short clause ("Omne stratum, in quo dormierit, et vas in quo sederit, pollutum erit"), omitting the specification of "all the days of her discharge" and both comparative clauses to niddah found twice in the Hebrew.