What Does Leviticus 15:17 Mean?
And every garment and every skin on which is the lying down of seed shall be trodden in the waters, and be soiled until evening.
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 every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “seed” also means offspring, so the trace on the garment bears the name of what can continue life.
THE MEANING
The verse lets a bodily trace extend beyond the body: reproductive seed on cloth or skin leaves that surface temporarily unclean. Washing addresses what remains, and evening gives the condition a stated limit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that bodily emission is itself a moral failure; it names a temporary condition with a means of cleansing and a defined endpoint.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow; seed and what grows from it.
“the lying down of seed” in this verse is zeraʿ. The Hebrew זֶרַע (zeraʿ) can name reproductive fluid and offspring. The same word holds the bodily trace and the possibility of continuation together, a connection English leaves less visible.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
This is the noun used here: what is on the garment is named with the same word used for a line of descendants.
zāraʿ: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb shows the root’s generative movement: seed is what is sown and can continue beyond its source.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents cleanness as a state restored through washing, with the needed cleansing shaped by what has come into contact.
And if the lying down of seed goes out from any man, he shall wash all his flesh in the waters, and be soiled until evening.And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day he shall cleanse himself, and wash his garments, and bathe himself in waters, and shall be clean at evening.Jesus said to him, The one who has bathed has no need, except to wash the feet, but is wholly clean; and you are clean, though not all of you.THE THREAD
And Onan knew that the seed would not be his, and whenever he went in to his brother's wife, he ruined it on the ground, lest he give seed to his brother.The Hebrew זֶרַע (zeraʿ), “seed,” appears there for offspring and here for reproductive fluid. The shared word reveals how the verse names the bodily substance through its connection to continuation.
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