a bright, shiny patch on the skin: one of the three marks a priest inspects when deciding whether a skin condition makes a person unclean
Every one of this word's twelve appearances sits inside a single body of law: the instructions in Leviticus 13 and 14 telling a priest how to examine a suspicious mark on someone's skin. The name itself points to brightness. The patch is paler and shinier than the skin around it, which is why most English Bibles render it "bright spot".
It is one of three marks the law names at the start of the procedure, alongside a raised or swollen patch (שְׂאֵת) and a scaly eruption (סַפַּחַת). Of the three, this is the one the chapter works out in the most detail. It governs the opening case, the case of a healed boil, and the case of a burn.
A bright patch is a question, not a verdict. When the priest finds one, he looks for three specific things:
- whether the hair growing in it has turned white
- whether the patch looks sunk below the surrounding skin
- whether it has spread during a week of waiting
Only those signs decide whether the person has the spreading condition the law declares unclean (צָרַעַת).
Often the answer is that all is well. A bright patch left where a boil or a burn has healed is simply scar tissue, and the priest pronounces the person clean. Bright patches scattered over the body that are dull rather than vivid are a harmless rash (בֹּהַק), and again the verdict is clean.
Disputed
Whether the word names a bright, shiny patch specifically, or more generally a patch of discolored skin, and whether the three terms listed in Leviticus 13:2 describe appearances or name distinct conditions.
- contestedA visible discoloration of the skin. On this reading the three terms of the list describe how a patch looks rather than naming separate diseases, since every criterion the priest applies is visual: whether hair within the patch has whitened, whether the patch appears deeper than the surrounding skin, and whether it has spread after quarantine.; Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (AB 3, 1991), pp. 773-76; Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989), pp. 76-79
- contestedA bright or shiny patch, retaining the note of brightness that the word's own derivation carries. The standard lexicons gloss it this way and most English versions follow them.; HALOT, vol. 1, s.v. בַּהֶרֶת; BDB, s.v. בַּהֶרֶת; Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (NICOT, 1979), pp. 194-201; Hartley, Leviticus (WBC 4, 1992), pp. 187-92