What Does Leviticus 13:40 Mean?
And the man whose hair has been uprooted from his head, he is bald; yet he is clean.
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 man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald; yet is he clean.THE KEY
The verse names baldness and cleanness together: what has disappeared from the body is not, by itself, contamination.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you now: bodily change does not by itself make you unclean. It names the hair loss plainly, then says the man is clean. The absence of hair is not the same thing as the affliction the chapter is examining.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a visible bodily difference is proof of impurity.
THE ROOT
קֵרֵחַ
qērēaḥ
GROWS FROM
קרח
q-r-ḥ
To be bald or to make a bald patch.
This root names both a bald head and the act of making a bald patch. The verse calls the man’s bodily condition clean; the bare surface itself does not determine the verdict.
ALSO GROWS
qorchah: A bald patch made on the head.
קָרְחָה
Deuteronomy uses this same root for baldness made for the dead, revealing the link between the condition named here and an intentional act.
yiqreḥu: They make a bald patch.
יִקְרְחוּ
The same root can describe an action, while this verse describes a man who is bald and clean.
טָהוֹר
ṭāhôr
GROWS FROM
טהר
ṭ-h-r
To be clean or pure.
“clean” in this verse is ṭāhôr. טָהוֹר names the man’s state; it does not describe his hair. The verse separates a visible bodily feature from the judgment of cleanness.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāhorāh: Cleanness or purification.
טָהֳרָה
This noun from the same root names cleanness as a state, the status given to the man here.
letahēr: To cleanse or make clean.
לְטַהֵר
The verb shows the same root can name the act of cleansing as well as the clean state declared in this verse.
THE PATTERN
A visible bodily difference does not, by itself, establish impurity or guilt.
Then the priest shall see it; and behold, if the striking has covered all his flesh, he shall declare clean the one who has the stroke; it has all turned white; he is clean.But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, for I have pushed him away. The LORD does not see as the human sees. The human sees what is outside, but the LORD sees the heart.Jesus answered, Neither has this man missed the mark, nor his parents, but that the works of God might be brought into the light in him.THE THREAD
You are the children of the LORD your God. You shall not gash yourselves, nor shave a bare place between your eyes for the dead.The same קרח root names the bald head here and the baldness made for the dead there. One verse names a bodily condition and calls the man clean; the other names an act.
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