Leviticus 6:11

6:11 Then he must take off his clothes and put on other clothes, and he must bring the fatty ashes outside the camp to a ceremonially ¹  clean place,

Leviticus 7:19

7:19 The meat which touches anything ceremonially ²  unclean must not be eaten; it must be burned up in the fire. As for ceremonially clean meat, ³  everyone who is ceremonially clean may eat the meat.

Leviticus 11:47

11:47 to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between the living creatures that may be eaten and the living creatures that must not be eaten.’”

Leviticus 13:13

13:13 the priest must then examine it, ⁴  and if ⁵  the disease covers his whole body, he is to pronounce the person with the infection clean. ⁶  He has turned all white, so he is clean. ⁷ 

Leviticus 13:37

13:37 If, as far as the priest can see, the scall has stayed the same ⁸  and black hair has sprouted in it, the scall has been healed; the person is clean. So the priest is to pronounce him clean. ⁹ 

Leviticus 13:39

13:39 the priest is to examine them, ¹⁰  and if ¹¹  the bright spots on the skin of their body are faded white, it is a harmless rash that has broken out on the skin. The person is clean. ¹² 

Leviticus 14:4

14:4 then the priest will command that two live clean birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, ¹³  and some twigs of hyssop ¹⁴  be taken up ¹⁵  for the one being cleansed. ¹⁶ 

[6:11]  ¹ tn The word “ceremonially” has been supplied in the translation to clarify that the uncleanness of the place involved is ritual or ceremonial in nature.

[7:19]  ² tn The word “ceremonially” has been supplied in the translation both here and in the following sentence to clarify that the uncleanness involved is ritual or ceremonial in nature.

[7:19]  ³ tn The Hebrew has simply “the flesh,” but this certainly refers to “clean” flesh in contrast to the unclean flesh in the first half of the verse.

[13:13]  ³ tn Heb “and the priest shall see.” The pronoun “it” is unexpressed, but it should be assumed and it refers to the infection (cf. the note on v. 8 above).

[13:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “and behold” (so KJV, ASV, NASB).

[13:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “he shall pronounce the infection clean,” but see v. 4 above. Also, this is another use of the declarative Piel of the verb טָהֵר (taher; cf. the note on v. 6 above).

[13:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “all of him has turned white, and he is clean.”

[13:37]  ⁴ tn Heb “and if in his eyes the infection has stood.”

[13:37]  ⁵ tn This is the declarative Piel of the verb טָהֵר (taher, cf. the note on v. 6 above).

[13:39]  ⁵ tn Heb “and the priest shall see.”

[13:39]  ⁶ tn Heb “and behold” (so KJV, ASV).

[13:39]  ⁷ tn Heb “he,” but the regulation applies to a man or a woman (v. 38a). In the translation “the person” is used to specify the referent more clearly.

[14:4]  ⁶ tn The term rendered here “crimson fabric” consists of two Hebrew words and means literally, “crimson of worm” (in this order only in Lev 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52 and Num 19:6; for the more common reverse order, “worm of crimson,” see, e.g., the colored fabrics used in making the tabernacle, Exod 25:4, etc.). This particular “worm” is an insect that lives on the leaves of palm trees, the eggs of which are the source for a “crimson” dye used to color various kinds of cloth (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 86). That a kind of dyed “fabric” is intended, not just the dye substance itself, is made certain by the dipping of it along with the other ritual materials listed here into the blood and water mixture for sprinkling on the person being cleansed (Lev 14:6; cf. also the burning of it in the fire of the red heifer in Num 19:6). Both the reddish color of cedar wood and the crimson colored fabric seem to correspond to the color of blood and may, therefore, symbolize either “life,” which is in the blood, or the use of blood to “make atonement” (see, e.g., Gen 9:4 and Lev 17:11). See further the note on v. 7 below.

[14:4]  ⁷ sn Twigs of hyssop (probably one or several species of marjoram thymus), a spice and herb plant that grows out of walls in Palestine (see 1 Kgs 4:33 [5:13 HT], HALOT 27 s.v. אֵזוֹב, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 195), were particularly leafy and therefore especially useful for sprinkling the purifying liquid (cf. vv. 5-7). Many of the details of the ritual procedure are obscure. It has been proposed, for example, that the “cedar wood” was a stick to which the hyssop was bound with the crimson material to make a sort of sprinkling instrument (Hartley, 195). In light of the burning of these three materials as part of the preparation of the ashes of the red heifer in Num 19:5-6, however, this seems unlikely.

[14:4]  ⁸ tn The MT reads literally, “And the priest shall command and he shall take.” Clearly, the second verb (“and he shall take”) contains the thrust of the priest’s command, which suggests the translation “that he take” (cf. also v. 5a). Since the priest issues the command here, he cannot be the subject of the second verb because he cannot be commanding himself to “take” up these ritual materials. Moreover, since the ritual is being performed “for the one being cleansed,” the antecedent of the pronoun “he” cannot refer to him. The LXX, Smr, and Syriac versions have the third person plural here and in v. 5a, which corresponds to other combinations with the verb וְצִוָּה (vÿtsivvah) “and he (the priest) shall command” in this context (see Lev 13:54; 14:36, 40). This suggests an impersonal (i.e., “someone shall take” and “someone shall slaughter,” respectively) or perhaps even passive rendering of the verbs in 14:4, 5 (i.e., “there shall be taken” and “there shall be slaughtered,” respectively). The latter option has been chosen here.

[14:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “the one cleansing himself” (i.e., Hitpael participle of טָהֵר, taher, “to be clean”).