Leviticus 15:4

Summary

Leviticus 15:4 states that any bed on which a man with a discharge (zav, H2100H) lies becomes unclean, and any object or piece of furniture on which he sits likewise becomes unclean. The verse establishes two parallel conditions—lying and sitting—each producing ritual impurity through contact.

Key words

• mishKav ("bed", H4904) — masculine singular noun, the surface for lying down; head of a construct phrase with kol ("every", H3605).
• zav ("discharging one", H2100H) — qal participle, masculine singular; describes an ongoing state of the man rather than a single event, functioning as the subject of the first clause.
• yishKav ("he will lie down", H7901G) — qal imperfect; denotes a future/hypothetical action introduced by the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A).
• keLi ("article/object", H3627) — masculine singular noun, parallel to mishKav in the second clause, broadening the scope beyond beds to any object.
• yitMa' ("it will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, repeated at the end of both clauses; marks the resulting state of impurity as a consequence rather than an instantaneous event.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel conditional clauses, each following the same grammatical pattern: kol ("every", H3605) + a noun (mishKav or keLi) + the relative particle asher ("which", H0834A) + a qal imperfect verb describing an action (yishKav, "he will lie down"; yeShev, "he will sit") + the preposition al ("on", H5921A) with a third-person suffix ("it") + the verb yitMa' ("it will be unclean", H2930A). This repetition creates a legal formula: object + condition of contact + resulting state.

The subject of the first clause's action is ha-zav ("the discharging one", H2100H), a qal participle used substantively as "the one who discharges," placed after the verb yishKav. This participial form frames the impurity as arising from an ongoing physical condition of the man, not a single occurrence. The imperfect verbs (yishKav, yeShev, yitMa') all carry a generalizing or habitual-conditional sense typical of legal/case formulations in the Hebrew text, describing what happens whenever such contact occurs, rather than a specific past event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders zav (H2100H) as ὁ γονορρυής, a technical Greek medical term for the one with genital discharge, making explicit what the Hebrew participle states more generally as "the discharging one." The Vulgate (VULCLEM) omits any word corresponding to zav or keli entirely in the portion given, stating only "omne stratum in quo dormierit... et ubicumque sederit" ("every bed in which he will have slept... and wherever he will have sat"), collapsing the second clause's noun keli ("object", H3627) into the adverbial "ubicumque" ("wherever") rather than naming a distinct object category as the Hebrew and LXX do.