What Does Leviticus 15:17 Mean in the King James?
And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.
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 Hebrew word for “seed” also means offspring, so the trace on the garment bears the name of what can continue life.
THE MEANING
The verse lets a bodily trace extend beyond the body: reproductive seed on cloth or skin leaves that surface temporarily unclean. Washing addresses what remains, and evening gives the condition a stated limit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that bodily emission is itself a moral failure; it names a temporary condition with a means of cleansing and a defined endpoint.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow; seed and what grows from it.
“seed” in this verse is zeraʿ. The Hebrew זֶרַע (zeraʿ) can name reproductive fluid and offspring. The same word holds the bodily trace and the possibility of continuation together, a connection English leaves less visible.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
This is the noun used here: what is on the garment is named with the same word used for a line of descendants.
zāraʿ: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb shows the root’s generative movement: seed is what is sown and can continue beyond its source.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents cleanness as a state restored through washing, with the needed cleansing shaped by what has come into contact.
And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even.Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.THE THREAD
And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.The Hebrew זֶרַע (zeraʿ), “seed,” appears there for offspring and here for reproductive fluid. The shared word reveals how the verse names the bodily substance through its connection to continuation.
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