What Does Leviticus 14:50 Mean?
And he shall slaughter one of the birds in a clay vessel over living waters.
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 kill the one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water:THE KEY
The water beneath the slaughter is called mayim chayyim, “living waters,” so death and life share one frame.
THE MEANING
The verse places the killed bird above waters named as living. Its image holds an ending and continuing life in the same frame.
THE ROOT
מַיִם חַיִּים
mayim chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, to be alive.
The Hebrew phrase is mayim chayyim, literally “living waters.” Chayyim grows from חיה, to live, so the water beneath the slaughter carries the language of life within the cleansing image.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Alive; living.
חַי
This adjective shares the life-root in “living waters.”
chayah: To live; remain alive.
חָיָה
The verb makes clear that the water’s description carries the language of life itself.
THE PATTERN
Purification and renewal imagery repeatedly sets living water beside what is being removed or restored.
As for the living bird, he shall take it, with the cedar wood, the scarlet, and the hyssop, and he shall immerse them and the living bird in the blood of the bird slaughtered over living waters.And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the offering for falling short, and living waters shall be placed upon them in a vessel.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
O LORD, the gathering pool of Israel, all who leave you shall be ashamed; those who turn aside from me shall be written in the earth, for they have left the LORD, the spring of living waters.Jeremiah calls the LORD “the fountain of living waters,” using the same Hebrew phrase, mayim chayyim, that the KJV renders “running water” here. The shared wording makes the water more than a detail of the cleansing scene: it carries the language of life.
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