Leviticus 15:9

Summary

The verse states that any saddle or riding gear used by a man with the zav discharge becomes unclean. The uncleanness is transferred through the act of riding, extending ritual impurity from the person to the object he sits upon.

Key words

• mer.Kav ("saddle", H4817) — masculine singular noun, the object that receives the impurity; grammatically in construct with khol ("every", H3605), forming "every [instance] of the saddle."
• yir.Kav ("he will ride", H7392) — qal imperfect, denoting a repeated or potential future action: whenever such riding occurs, the rule applies.
• ha.Zav ("the one discharging", H2100H) — qal participle, functioning as a substantive ("the one who is in a state of discharge"); the participle marks an ongoing condition rather than a single event.
• yit.Ma' ("it will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, describing the resulting state of the saddle after contact, parallel in form to yir.Kav.
• 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that specifies which saddle is affected, i.e., the one actually ridden by the zav.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a relative clause construction: khol ha-mer.kav ("every saddle") is the subject, followed by 'asher yir.kav 'alav ha-zav ("which the discharging one rides upon it"), and the main clause closes with yit.ma' ("it will be unclean"). The double use of the qal imperfect (yir.kav / yit.ma') creates a grammatical parallel between the action of riding and the resulting state of impurity, suggesting that the uncleanness follows automatically and repeatedly from the act, not as an isolated incident.

The participle ha.zav functions almost as a technical term for a person in a continuing physiological state, distinct from a finite verb describing a single occurrence. This participial form appears elsewhere in Leviticus 15 as the designation for the man whose ongoing discharge is the subject of the surrounding purity regulations. The construct chain khol ha-mer.kav ("all of the saddle" / "every saddle") uses khol to universalize the rule to any such riding equipment, regardless of type or material, as long as the specified condition (riding by the zav) is met.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Septuagint) specifies ἐπίσαγμα ὄνου, "the saddle of a donkey," where the Hebrew mer.kav ("saddle") has no reference to a donkey. The LXX also adds ἕως ἑσπέρας, "until evening," a temporal qualifier absent from the Hebrew clause, which simply states yit.ma' ("it will be unclean") without specifying duration. The Vulgate renders yir.kav ("he will ride") with sederit ("he will sit"), a verb of sitting rather than riding, and omits explicit mention of ha.zav ("the one discharging") as a distinct noun phrase, integrating it implicitly into the clause "immundum erit" ("it will be unclean").