What Does Leviticus 13:15 Mean?
And the priest shall look upon the living flesh, and declare him soiled; for the living flesh is soiled; it is a striking.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be unclean: for the raw flesh is unclean: it is a leprosy.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls it “living flesh” and still names it unclean, holding bodily life and a severe verdict in the same sentence.
THE MEANING
The priest sees the living flesh and pronounces him unclean: life is present, and the verdict is real. The verse speaks now wherever a living body bears a condition that receives a concrete name; life does not cancel the condition, and the condition does not cancel life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that living flesh must therefore be clean: the verse holds life and uncleanness together.
THE ROOT
חַי
ḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive.
The Hebrew phrase means “the living flesh”; “raw” can obscure that the word explicitly marks life. The same root names life and living creatures, so the flesh is not described as lifeless even as the verse calls it unclean.
ALSO GROWS
chayyim: Life, living.
חַיִּים
This branch makes the life-bearing sense of “living flesh” explicit.
chayyah: A living creature.
חַיָּה
The same root describes a living being, linking the flesh’s condition to the continued presence of life.
טָמֵא
tamei
GROWS FROM
טמא
To be unclean or impure.
The root appears in both the priest’s act and the condition’s designation: the priest marks him unclean because of what he sees. The verse keeps this status distinct from the flesh’s being alive, without weakening either statement.
ALSO GROWS
tum’ah: Uncleanness, impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the status assigned in the verse.
timmeʾ: To make or declare unclean.
טִמֵּא
This verb describes the priest’s act of assigning that status after seeing the living flesh.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names bodily affliction in concrete language, letting its full condition be seen.
So went forth the Adversary from the face of the LORD, and struck Job with a harmful boil from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.There is no unbroken place in my flesh because of your boiling; there is no wholeness in my bones because of my falling short.And a leper came to him, pleading with him, falling to his knees before him, and saying, "If you will, you are able to make me clean."THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.“Living” in both “living flesh” and “living soul” comes from חיה (chayah), the root for being alive. Genesis names the human as a living soul; Leviticus calls the flesh living while declaring the person unclean, so the designation does not erase the life it sees.
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