What Does Leviticus 13:52 Mean?

He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or weft, of wool or of linen, or anything of skin, in which the stroke is; for it is a gnawing striking; it shall be burned in the fire.

Leviticus 13:52 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in woollen or in linen, or any thing of skin, wherein the plague is: for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire.

THE KEY

The Hebrew calls the plague a touch or strike that has reached the cloth, making its spread, not just its presence, the defining fact.

THE MEANING

The marked garment is burned in its entirety, whether it is wool, linen, warp, woof, or leather. The verse holds a stark boundary: when the affliction is in the material, the material itself is consumed.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the assumption that every damaged thing can be restored by patching: here, the marked garment is burned whole.

THE ROOT

נֶגַע

negaʿ an affliction

GROWS FROM

נגע

To touch, strike, or reach.

The Hebrew word for plague, ⁨נֶגַע⁩ (negaʿ), grows from the same root as “touch” and “reach.” The affliction is pictured as an impact that has reached the cloth, which makes the verse’s concern with its spread feel concrete.

ALSO GROWS

nagaʿ: To touch, strike, or reach.

נָגַע

This verb reveals the contact beneath the word “plague”: the mark is something that has struck or reached its material.

higgiaʿ: To reach or arrive.

הִגִּיעַ

This form carries the same root into arrival; the mark is present where it has reached, tying the affliction to the material it now occupies.

THE PATTERN

The reach of a spreading condition matters: its effects move through the whole thing it enters.

And he shall tear down the house, its stones, its timber, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them out of the city into a soiled place.

Leviticus 14:45 · SDVThe response names every part of the afflicted house and removes them together, meeting the condition at the scale of the whole structure.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

1 Corinthians 5:6 · SDVA small amount of leaven changes the whole lump, showing how far a condition can spread through what contains it.

And their word will feed like gangrene; among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus.

2 Timothy 2:17 · SDVWords are pictured as a disease that eats through its host, giving spreading harm a physical, advancing shape.

THE THREAD

And he shall look upon the stroke on the seventh day; if the stroke has spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the weft, or in a skin, or in any work made of skin; the stroke is a gnawing striking; it is soiled.

Leviticus 13:51 · SDV

The same Hebrew ⁨נֶגַע⁩ (negaʿ, affliction or mark) appears in both verses. Verse 51 shows the mark spreading through the fabric; this verse gives the severe response once that condition is found in the garment.

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