What Does Leviticus 14:41 Mean?

And he shall have the house scraped within, all around, and they shall pour out the dust they scrape off outside the city into a soiled place.

Leviticus 14:41 · 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

And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an unclean place:

THE KEY

The house is cleared by scraping away what clings within and carrying the residue beyond the city’s boundary.

THE MEANING

Here cleansing is physical and subtractive: the house’s inner surface is scraped all around, and the dust is taken beyond the city to a place marked unclean. What is removed is not left mingled with the dwelling; the verse gives the residue a destination.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that a contaminated trace can remain inside once a house is made clean.

THE ROOT

וְהִקְצוּ

wehiqtsu

GROWS FROM

קצה

To cut or scrape away; the related noun also carries the sense of an edge or extremity.

“scraped” in this verse is wehiqtsu. Hebrew repeats the same verb for the scraping and the dust they scrape away, so removal is the verse’s repeated action. The root’s connection to an edge or extremity echoes the work around the house’s inner perimeter and the carrying of what is cut away beyond the city’s boundary.

ALSO GROWS

wehiqtsu: They scrape or cut away.

וְהִקְצוּ

This is the repeated action that removes material from the house’s interior.

qatseh: Edge, end, or extremity.

קָצֶה

This related form echoes the passage’s movement from the house’s inner edge to beyond the city’s edge.

THE PATTERN

Cleansing takes away what carries contamination from the place it has occupied.

Remove my falling short with hyssop, and I am clean; tread me, and I am whiter than snow.

Psalm 51:7 · SDVThe speaker’s cleansing is expressed through purging and washing away what soils.

I will return my hand upon you, and smelt out your slag as with lye, and remove all your alloy.

Isaiah 1:25 · SDVThe image of cleansing is the removal of what is mixed into the material.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and threw out all who sold and bought in the temple, and turned over the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of those who sold doves.

Matthew 21:12 · SDVWhat disrupts the temple’s purpose is expelled from its space.

THE THREAD

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 · SDV

This verse reveals the boundary in 14:41 as part of a larger clearing sequence: if the plague continues, the whole house is dismantled and carried beyond the city to an unclean place. The repeated destination shows the separation between contaminated material and the place where people dwell.

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