What Does Leviticus 14:50 Mean in the King James?
And he shall kill the one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water:
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
The water beneath the slaughter is called mayim chayyim, “living waters,” so death and life share one frame.
THE MEANING
The verse places the killed bird above waters named as living. Its image holds an ending and continuing life in the same frame.
THE ROOT
מַיִם חַיִּים
mayim chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, to be alive.
“running water” in this verse is mayim chayyim. The Hebrew phrase is mayim chayyim, literally “living waters.” Chayyim grows from חיה, to live, so the water beneath the slaughter carries the language of life within the cleansing image.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Alive; living.
חַי
This adjective shares the life-root in “living waters.”
chayah: To live; remain alive.
חָיָה
The verb makes clear that the water’s description carries the language of life itself.
THE PATTERN
Purification and renewal imagery repeatedly sets living water beside what is being removed or restored.
As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water:And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.THE THREAD
O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.Jeremiah calls the LORD “the fountain of living waters,” using the same Hebrew phrase, mayim chayyim, that the KJV renders “running water” here. The shared wording makes the water more than a detail of the cleansing scene: it carries the language of life.
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