What Does Leviticus 13:52 Mean in the King James?

He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in woollen or in linen, or any thing of skin, wherein the plague is: for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire.

Leviticus 13:52 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The Hebrew calls the plague a touch or strike that has reached the cloth, making its spread, not just its presence, the defining fact.

THE MEANING

The marked garment is burned in its entirety, whether it is wool, linen, warp, woof, or leather. The verse holds a stark boundary: when the affliction is in the material, the material itself is consumed.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the assumption that every damaged thing can be restored by patching: here, the marked garment is burned whole.

THE ROOT

נֶגַע

negaʿ an affliction

GROWS FROM

נגע

To touch, strike, or reach.

The Hebrew word for plague, ⁨נֶגַע⁩ (negaʿ), grows from the same root as “touch” and “reach.” The affliction is pictured as an impact that has reached the cloth, which makes the verse’s concern with its spread feel concrete.

ALSO GROWS

nagaʿ: To touch, strike, or reach.

נָגַע

This verb reveals the contact beneath the word “plague”: the mark is something that has struck or reached its material.

higgiaʿ: To reach or arrive.

הִגִּיעַ

This form carries the same root into arrival; the mark is present where it has reached, tying the affliction to the material it now occupies.

THE PATTERN

The reach of a spreading condition matters: its effects move through the whole thing it enters.

And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the morter of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place.

Leviticus 14:45 · KJVThe response names every part of the afflicted house and removes them together, meeting the condition at the scale of the whole structure.

Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

1 Corinthians 5:6 · KJVA small amount of leaven changes the whole lump, showing how far a condition can spread through what contains it.

And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;

2 Timothy 2:17 · KJVWords are pictured as a disease that eats through its host, giving spreading harm a physical, advancing shape.

THE THREAD

And he shall look on the plague on the seventh day: if the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin; the plague is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean.

Leviticus 13:51 · KJV

The same Hebrew ⁨נֶגַע⁩ (negaʿ, affliction or mark) appears in both verses. Verse 51 shows the mark spreading through the fabric; this verse gives the severe response once that condition is found in the garment.

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