What Does Leviticus 14:49 Mean?
And he shall take, to make the house clean, two birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop.
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 take to cleanse the house two birds, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “cleanse” shares its root with “missing,” so cleansing is pictured as clearing what has gone wrong in the house.
THE MEANING
The house’s cleansing is pictured as a concrete act involving two birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. The Hebrew verb for cleansing shares a root with “missing,” giving restoration the shape of clearing what has gone wrong.
THE ROOT
לְחַטֵּא
leḥaṭṭēʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥata
The basic sense is to miss or go wrong; this derived verb means to cleanse or purge.
“make clean” in this verse is leḥaṭṭēʾ. The verb for cleansing belongs to the same Hebrew word family as “missing.” The language holds the breach and its clearing together, so cleansing the house is more than a label: it is a process that addresses what has gone wrong.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: Missing; offense.
חֵטְא
This noun names the breach within the same root family as the verb used to cleanse the house.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; in a sacrificial context, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
This branch keeps the root’s sense of missing visible alongside the cleansing action.
THE PATTERN
Purification in Scripture is pictured through tangible materials applied to the place or person being restored.
And a clean person shall take hyssop, and immerse it in the waters, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon every living soul that was there, and upon him who touches a bone, or one pierced, or one dead, or a grave.Remove my falling short with hyssop, and I am clean; tread me, and I am whiter than snow.For when every command had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the instruction, he took the blood of calves and goats with water, crimson wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people.THE THREAD
Remove my falling short with hyssop, and I am clean; tread me, and I am whiter than snow.The verb translated “Purge” shares the Hebrew root חטא (ḥata, “missing”) with “cleanse” in Leviticus 14:49, and both verses name hyssop. In Leviticus the house is cleansed; here the speaker uses that same purification language for the self, opening the house-cleaning image into a personal plea.
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