Leviticus 15:5

Summary

Leviticus 15:5 states that anyone who touches the bed of a man with a discharge must wash his clothes and bathe in water, remaining unclean until evening. The verse follows a sequential chain of actions tied to a single condition of contact.

Key words

• yiga' ("he will touch", H5060) — qal imperfect, expressing a future/ongoing hypothetical action that triggers the rest of the sequence.
• mishkavo ("his bed", H4904 + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, meaning "bed of him," referring back to the man with the discharge discussed in the surrounding context.
• yekhabes ("he will wash", H3526H) — piel imperfect, an intensive verb stem indicating a thorough washing action, applied specifically to garments (begadav, "his garments", H0899B).
• rachats ("he will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), continuing the narrative chain after the initial imperfect verb; this washing applies to the body, done "with the water" (ba-mayim, H4325G + H9003).
• tame' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect, marking the resulting state of impurity that follows the washing actions, lasting "until the evening" (ad ha-'arev, H5704 + H6153).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with ve-'ish 'asher ("and a man who," H0376I + H0834A), a construction introducing a generalized conditional subject — "anyone who." The verb yiga' (H5060) is in the qal imperfect, setting up the triggering condition: contact with mishkavo ("his bed," H4904), the bed of the man with the discharge described earlier in the chapter.

After this initial imperfect verb, the text shifts to a chain of sequential perfects (vav-consecutive), a common Biblical Hebrew structure for narrating a sequence of resulting actions: yekhabes ("he will wash," H3526H, piel) applies to the garments, then rachats ("he will wash," H7364, qal) applies to the body "with the water" (ba-mayim, H4325G). The distinction between the piel form for garments and the qal form for the body reflects two separate verbs for washing, each governing a different object (clothing vs. person), though both are rendered as "wash" in English.

The final verb, tame' ("he will be unclean," H2930A), also a sequential perfect, states the resulting condition, which persists 'ad ha-'arev ("until the evening," H5704 + H6153) — a fixed temporal boundary using the definite article on 'erev ("evening," H6153).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mishkavo ("his bed") as tēs koitēs autou ("his bed/couch"), matching the Hebrew closely. The Vulgate specifies lectum ejus ("his bed") but introduces Si quis hominum ("if any of men"), making explicit the generalized subject that the Hebrew 'ish 'asher ("anyone who") conveys more compactly. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation adds interpretive context not present in the Hebrew word-by-word data, specifying "la cama del hombre impuro" ("the bed of the impure man"), where the Hebrew simply has the pronominal suffix "his" (-o, H9023) without naming "impure" explicitly in this verse.