What Does Leviticus 13:13 Mean in the King James?
Then the priest shall consider: and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague: it is all turned white: he is clean.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Full coverage, not disappearance, ends in a clean declaration when everything has turned white.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks a startling rule: even when the mark covers the whole body, its becoming wholly white is the sign by which the priest calls the person clean. “Clean” names the person’s status while the visible condition remains in view. The ruling depends on what the whole sign has become, not on the body looking untouched.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a condition covering the whole body must be declared unclean: here, the full spread turning white is the condition for declaring him clean.
THE ROOT
וְטִהַר
ve-tihar
GROWS FROM
טהר
Be clean or pure; in this form, cleanse or declare clean.
“pronounce him clean” in this verse is ve-tihar. The priest’s וְטִהַר (ve-tihar, “he cleanses or declares clean”) comes from טהר (tahar, “be clean or pure”), and the verse ends with טָהוֹר (tahor, “clean or pure”) from that same root. The condition remains visible, so the repeated root names the judgment over it without saying the sign has vanished.
ALSO GROWS
tahor: Clean, pure.
טָהוֹר
The verse ends by naming the person’s status with this word, from the same root as the priest’s declaration.
taher: To be clean or pure.
טָהֵר
This verbal form shows the root as a movement into cleanness, not only a label for a person.
taharah: Cleanness, purification.
טָהֳרָה
This noun carries the same root into the state or process of being clean.
לָבָן
lavan
GROWS FROM
לבן
Be white; become or make white.
לָבָן (lavan, “white”) names a visible color, while טָהוֹר (tahor, “clean or pure”) names the judgment that follows it. The verse places color and status together without saying the skin’s mark disappears.
ALSO GROWS
lavan: White.
לָבָן
This is the visible state the verse names before the clean declaration.
hilbin: To whiten or make white.
הִלְבִּין
This verbal branch shows whiteness as a change taking place, matching the verse’s “all turned white.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses whiteness as a visible sign of cleansing and changed status.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.THE THREAD
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.The Hebrew וְאֶטְהָר (ve-et’har, “and I shall be clean”) in Psalm 51 shares טהר (tahar, “be clean or pure”) with וְטִהַר (ve-tihar, “he cleanses or declares clean”) in Leviticus. Psalm places that root beside “whiter than snow,” making explicit the pairing of whiteness and clean status in the Leviticus verse.
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