Leviticus 15:27

Summary

Leviticus 15:27 states that anyone who touches items rendered impure by the discharge described in the preceding verses becomes unclean. It then prescribes the required actions—washing garments and bathing in water—before noting that the state of uncleanness persists until evening.

Key words

• no.Ge.a' ("[one who] touches", H5060) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing or generic action ("the one touching"); combined with khol ("every", H3605) it forms the subject "everyone who touches."
• yit.Ma' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, indicating the resulting state after contact, presented as a future/ongoing consequence rather than a completed fact.
• khi.Bes ("he will wash", H3526H) — piel sequential perfect, an intensive stem denoting thorough washing (of garments), continuing the narrative chain begun by the imperfect.
• ra.Chatz ("he will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect, a separate verb from khi.Bes, referring to washing the body rather than clothing.
• ta.Me' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect, repeating the root of yit.Ma' but now in the perfect form, marking the final stated condition until evening.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-khol ha-no.Ge.a' bam ("and everyone touching in them"), where the construct phrase khol + article + participle creates a generalizing subject: any person, without specification of gender or status, who has contact with the previously mentioned impure items. The pronominal suffix bam ("in them", H9038) points back to antecedent objects named earlier in the chapter, so this clause depends grammatically on prior verses for its referent.

The verb sequence yit.Ma' (imperfect) followed by khi.Bes, ra.Chatz, and ta.Me' (all sequential perfects) forms a standard Hebrew narrative chain: an initial imperfect sets the condition ("he will be unclean"), and the following perfects with vav describe the sequence of required responses and the resulting state, functioning almost like a legal protocol — touch, contamination, washing of clothing, washing of body, then uncleanness "until evening" ('ad ha-'Arev). The repetition of the root tm' (H2930A) at both the start and the end of the verse frames the entire unit: contamination is declared, actions are taken, yet the impure status still holds until a fixed temporal marker, the evening.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew pronominal suffix bam ("in them") with the feminine singular autēs ("of it/her"), suggesting a different or more singular antecedent than the Hebrew's plural referent. The LXX also explicitly adds "the body" (to sōma) with lousetai ("he will bathe"), where the Hebrew simply has ra.Chatz ba-mayim ("he washed in the water") without specifying the body as a direct object. The Vulgate follows a similar order but uses lavabit vestimenta ("he will wash the garments") before lotus aqua ("washed with water"), matching the Hebrew sequence of garment-washing preceding water-washing.