What Does Leviticus 13:57 Mean in the King James?

And if it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of skin; it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire.

Leviticus 13:57 · 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 word translated “spreading” also means “blossoming”: the same root can describe a desert in bloom or a boil breaking out.

THE MEANING

When the mark keeps breaking out through the garment, warp, woof, or leather, it is no longer treated as an isolated stain. The response is stark and complete: the item carrying the outbreak is burned.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

This undoes the assumption that a persistent mark is only a local blemish: here, continued outbreak changes the judgment and the response reaches its carrier.

THE ROOT

פֹּרַחַת

porachat

GROWS FROM

פרח

To sprout, blossom, or break out.

Hebrew pictures the “spreading” as a kind of blossoming: something breaks outward through the weave. The same root names a desert coming into bloom and a boil breaking out, so the root describes emergence; the surrounding context shows whether it flourishes or harms.

ALSO GROWS

perach: Blossom, flower.

פֶּרַח

This noun carries the image of flowering inside the word translated “spreading.”

poreach: Breaking out; used of the boil in Exodus 9:9.

פֹּרֵחַ

The same root describes a boil breaking out, revealing its sense of eruption as well as bloom.

yifrach: Shall blossom; used in Isaiah 35:1.

יִפְרָח

The root also describes the desert blossoming, showing the flourishing side of the same outward emergence.

THE PATTERN

Once an outbreak enters its medium, its effects can reach the whole field it occupies.

And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.

Exodus 9:9 · KJVThe boil is described as breaking out across the land, giving the same eruption image a bodily form.

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 works through the whole lump, showing how an influence moves through its medium.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

James 3:6 · KJVA fire beginning with the tongue is pictured reaching the whole body and the course of life.

THE THREAD

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

Isaiah 35:1 · KJV

Leviticus calls the outbreak ⁨פֹּרַחַת⁩, from the same root used when Isaiah says the desert shall “blossom.” The word names emergence itself: here it breaks out through cloth; there it flowers across the wilderness.

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