What Does Leviticus 14:45 Mean?
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.
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 he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the morter of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place.THE KEY
Here the house itself crosses the boundary: it is broken into its parts, and every part is sent outside the city.
THE MEANING
The house’s uncleanness reaches its whole fabric: its stones, timber, and all its mortar are broken down and brought beyond the city into an unclean place. No part of the named house remains inside the boundary.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that a marked house can always remain intact if only its visible trouble is removed: here the whole structure is dismantled and carried out.
THE ROOT
וְהוֹצִיא
vehotsi
GROWS FROM
יצא
yatsa
Go out or come forth; in a causative form, bring out.
“carry” in this verse is vehotsi. The verb presents the movement as bringing the materials out, causing them to leave the house and cross the city boundary. The removal is complete outward movement, ending in a place named unclean.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: Go out, come forth.
יָצָא
The basic form describes leaving a boundary; here the house’s materials are made to follow that outward motion.
yetsi'ah: Going out, departure.
יְצִיאָה
This noun names the movement enacted here: the house’s components depart together from the city.
motsa: Exit, place of going out.
מוֹצָא
The root can name both the movement out and its point of exit, sharpening the verse’s emphasis on crossing a boundary.
טָמֵא
tame
GROWS FROM
טמא
tama
Be unclean or ritually impure.
“soiled” in this verse is tame. The word for the destination belongs to the same root as the state of being unclean and the act of defiling: condition, action, and place share a word family. The house is carried to a place explicitly named by the same impurity vocabulary.
ALSO GROWS
timme: Defile, make unclean.
טִמֵּא
This branch names the act associated with the condition that marks the house and its destination.
tumah: Impurity, uncleanness.
טֻמְאָה
This noun makes explicit the state named by the destination where the dismantled materials go.
אֲבָנָיו
avanav
GROWS FROM
אבן
even
Stone.
The stone-word אֶבֶן (even, stone) carries a name-play of אַב (av, father) and בֵּן (ben, son), holding father and son within the word. Here every אֲבָנִים (avanim, stones) still goes out with the house, so even this image of continuity does not preserve a stone in place.
ALSO GROWS
even: Stone.
אֶבֶן
The singular form shows that each stone named as part of the house belongs to the dismantling.
avnei: Stones of; the construct form of stones.
אַבְנֵי
This form joins stones to what they belong to, echoing how the verse names them as parts of the house.
THE PATTERN
When impurity threatens a community’s shared space, the marked person or material is taken beyond its boundary.
Then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which the stroke is, and they shall throw them into a soiled place outside the city.From male to female you send out; outside the camp you send them, so that they soil not their camps, in whose midst I pitch my tent.For the bodies of those living ones, whose blood is carried into the set-apart places by the high priest for falling short, are burned outside the camp.THE THREAD
Then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which the stroke is, and they shall throw them into a soiled place outside the city.This verse uses the same word for “unclean” to name the destination, but removes only the affected stones. Beside it, the movement widens from carrying out marked stones to dismantling and carrying out the whole house.
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