What Does Leviticus 14:55 Mean?
And for the stroke of a garment, and of a house.
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 for the leprosy of a garment, and of a house,THE KEY
The same affliction can mark what you wear and the house that shelters you, so the verse makes its reach larger than a body.
THE MEANING
The verse names tsaraat on both a garment and a house, so the condition reaches beyond skin into what covers and shelters you. What you wear and inhabit also enter the field the text brings into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief this undoes is that a visible affliction can belong only to a person’s body.
THE ROOT
צָרַעַת
tsāraʿat
GROWS FROM
צ־ר־ע
ṣ-r-ʿ
To be affected with tsaraat, a visible affliction.
“leprosy” in this verse is tsāraʿat. Here צָרַעַת (tsāraʿat, the visible affliction) names a condition on a garment and a house, not only on skin. Its word family also names a person affected by tsaraat, spanning the afflicted person and the surfaces around them.
ALSO GROWS
tsāraʿ: To be affected with tsaraat.
צָרַע
This verbal form shows the affliction as something that appears or takes hold.
məṣōrāʿ: A person affected with tsaraat.
מְצֹרָע
This form applies the same word family to a person, while the verse applies it to clothing and a house.
THE PATTERN
The same visible affliction is named across skin, clothing, and home, extending its reach across the surfaces around a person.
When a man has in the skin of his flesh a lifting, a scab, or a shining spot, and it is in the skin of his flesh like the stroke of the striking; then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests;The garment also in which the stroke of the striking is, whether a wool garment, or a linen garment;When you have come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you as a holding, and I set the striking of the skin on a house in the land of your holding.THE THREAD
The garment also in which the stroke of the striking is, whether a wool garment, or a linen garment;Leviticus 13:47 uses the same Hebrew word צָרַעַת (tsāraʿat, visible affliction) for a condition in cloth. That shared word opens this verse’s list wider: the affliction is named on clothing as well as on a house.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us