What Does Leviticus 14:55 Mean in the King James?
And for the leprosy of a garment, and of a house,
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 same affliction can mark what you wear and the house that shelters you, so the verse makes its reach larger than a body.
THE MEANING
The verse names tsaraat on both a garment and a house, so the condition reaches beyond skin into what covers and shelters you. What you wear and inhabit also enter the field the text brings into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief this undoes is that a visible affliction can belong only to a person’s body.
THE ROOT
צָרַעַת
tsāraʿat
GROWS FROM
צ־ר־ע
ṣ-r-ʿ
To be affected with tsaraat, a visible affliction.
“leprosy” in this verse is tsāraʿat. Here צָרַעַת (tsāraʿat, the visible affliction) names a condition on a garment and a house, not only on skin. Its word family also names a person affected by tsaraat, spanning the afflicted person and the surfaces around them.
ALSO GROWS
tsāraʿ: To be affected with tsaraat.
צָרַע
This verbal form shows the affliction as something that appears or takes hold.
məṣōrāʿ: A person affected with tsaraat.
מְצֹרָע
This form applies the same word family to a person, while the verse applies it to clothing and a house.
THE PATTERN
The same visible affliction is named across skin, clothing, and home, extending its reach across the surfaces around a person.
When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests:The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be a woollen garment, or a linen garment;When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession;THE THREAD
The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be a woollen garment, or a linen garment;Leviticus 13:47 uses the same Hebrew word צָרַעַת (tsāraʿat, visible affliction) for a condition in cloth. That shared word opens this verse’s list wider: the affliction is named on clothing as well as on a house.
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