Leviticus 15:8

Summary

This verse addresses a case of ritual impurity: if a man with a bodily discharge spits on a person who is ritually pure, that pure person must wash his clothes and bathe in water, and remains unclean until evening.

Key words

• ya.Rok ("he will spit", H7556) — qal imperfect, describing the discharging man's action as an ongoing/potential future event within the conditional clause introduced by khi- ("if", H3588A).
• ha.Zav ("the [one] discharging", H2100H) — qal participle with definite article, functioning as a substantive: "the one who discharges," identifying the subject who spits.
• khi.Bes ("he will wash", H3526H) — piel sequential perfect, an intensive verb form indicating thorough washing of garments; it follows ya.Rok in the narrative chain marked by the vav.
• ra.Chatz ("he will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect, a simple (non-intensive) washing action applied to the body, distinct from the piel form used for garments.
• ta.Me' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect, marking the resulting state of impurity that closes the sequence of actions.

What the text says

The verse is structured as a conditional clause (ve-khi, "and if") followed by a chain of sequential perfect verbs (ve-... ve-... ve-...) that narrate the required response. The protasis names the agent, ha.Zav ("the one discharging", H2100H), a qal participle functioning as a noun — literally "the discharging one" — who performs the action ya.Rok ("he will spit", H7556) "on the pure [person]" (ba.Tahor, H2889). The apodosis shifts grammatical subject to the person spat upon, who must perform two distinct washing actions: khi.Bes ("he will wash", H3526H), a piel (intensive) verb applied specifically to begadav ("his garments", H0899B, with the possessive suffix -v, "his"), and ra.Chatz ("he will wash", H7364), a qal (simple) verb applied to the body with water (ba.Mayim, H4325G).

The distinction between the piel verb for washing garments and the qal verb for washing the body reflects two separate grammatical forms rather than a single generic "washing" action — the Hebrew marks intensity or thoroughness differently depending on the object (cloth vs. body). The sequence concludes with ta.Me' ("he will be unclean", H2930A), a qal sequential perfect stating the resulting temporary state, bounded by the prepositional phrase 'ad-ha'Arev ("until the evening", H5704 + H6153).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha.Zav ("the discharging one") as ὁ γονορρυὴς, a technical Greek term for the man with the flow, matching the Hebrew participle's substantive function. The Vulgate renders the spitting action more explicitly as "salivam... jecerit" ("shall have cast saliva"), expanding the single Hebrew verb ya.Rok ("he will spit") into a fuller descriptive phrase, while the Hebrew uses one finite verb form.