body
leprosy
צרעת · נגע · צרוע · מצורע · צרעה
Bottom line
Tzaraas is the affliction itself, the impurity that has taken hold; nega is the spot, the point of contact where it strikes, and where the Torah pairs them, nega tzaraas, it is naming two things and not one. Tzarua and metzora both mean leper, but tzarua is the man while the affliction is on him and metzora still fits him until the purification is complete (Perlmutter). Do not render tzaraas "leprosy" as a medical identification; the affliction has been rendered leprosy, Hansen's disease, epilepsy, mold and mere skin discoloration, and Rav Hirsch holds that an affliction that is merely pathological is by definition not a nega at all.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| צרעת | tzaraas | leprosy, the affliction | the impurity clinging to the sinner (Arizal); "disease" generally (Ibn Ezra to Vayikra 13:19) |
| נגע | nega | spot, plague-spot | the meeting point of the man and what strikes him (Pappenheim); the Divine blow that exposes the impurity (Arizal) |
| צרוע | tzarua | leper, while afflicted | used only of one actually bearing the affliction (Perlmutter); a single spot (Shadal) |
| מצורע | metzora | leper, until purified | covers the healed man before purification (Perlmutter); read as motzi shem ra (Erachin 15b) |
| צרעה | tzirah | hornet, pestilence | sent against the Canaanites; a malady rather than an insect (Ibn Ezra), "destruction, pestilence" (Ibn Janach) |
Where the authorities disagree
Are tzaraas and nega synonyms? The Arizal (Shaar HaMitzvos, Tazria) says firmly not. Tzaraas is a spirit of impurity that clings to a man because of a spiritual defect, a real contamination that then shows itself on the body. Nega is the opposite in origin: a holy force, a Divine judgment from the side of purity, whose work is to drive the tzaraas out by forcing it to the surface where it can be dealt with. On this reading nega tzaraas (Vayikra 13:2-3, 13:9, 13:20, 13:25, 13:27, 13:47, 13:49, 13:59, 14:32, 14:34) names both the impurity and the mechanism that exposes it, and each word appears alone where only one of the two is in view. The Bottom line follows this.
What tzirah is. Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 23:28, Devarim 7:20): not a hornet but a disease, of a piece with tzaraas. Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) traces both to צ-ר-ע and defines tzirah as destruction and pestilence. Menachem Ibn Saruk lists the two as separate categories under one root and entertains no thematic or semantic connection between them. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Yerios Shlomo) keeps the standard "hornet" and surmises that the two are connected by content: a hornet's sting is venomous and can prove lethal, as tzaraas can be poisonous and detrimental to a man's health. Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehudah) reads tzirah instead as a fusion of tzar, enemy, and ra, bad, swarms of wasps or bees being a peculiarly formidable enemy in that they cannot be fought with sword and spear.
Why the Torah alternates tzarua and metzora. Four answers:
- Homiletic. Peirush HaRokeach (to Vayikra 13:45), as the editors of Tosafos HaShaleim read him: metzora is tzarua plus an initial mem, whose gematria forty points to the fortieth day of Moshe's ascent and the sin of the Golden Calf, for which one punishment was tzaraas (Vayikra Rabbah 17:3). The article notes the weakness: it does not explain which word goes where.
- The source of the derashah. Rabbi Menachem Deutsch, quoted by Rabbi Shlomo Tzvi Shick (Torah Shleimah, Metzora 1): the very choice of metzora over tzarua is what prompted Chazal to expound metzora as motzi shem ra (Erachin 15b).
- Stage of the affliction. Rabbi Eliezer Perlmutter (Even Moshe): tzarua is only for one still actively afflicted, while metzora covers a man whose spot has healed but who has not yet finished the purification, since he remains on the cusp of the affliction returning.
- Number of spots. Shadal (to Vayikra 13:5): tzarua is one who has only a single nega, and metzora is one who... The published text breaks off mid-word there, so what Shadal said of metzora is not recoverable from the article; the article itself introduces the distinction as hard to substantiate.
The Bottom line follows Perlmutter. That is our choice, not a ranking the article makes, though the article does say of the first answer that it fails to account for where each word is used, and introduces the fourth as hard to substantiate.
Distinctions
tzaraas (צרעת) and the root צ-ר-ע
The noun and its inflections appear thirty-five times in Tanach, most of them in Vayikra 13-14, plus Devarim 24:8 (one may not evade the consequences by cutting the spot away), Naaman in Melachim II 5:3, 5:6-7, 5:27, and Uziyahu, struck on the forehead for offering the ketores, in Divrei HaYamim II 26:19. Gesenius and other philologists, the column reports, hold the Hebrew root related to the Arabic sara'a, being thrown down to the ground, which is where a possible connection to epilepsy comes from; the column takes that literal sense to suggest, in its own words, that Hashem throws a man down and humbles him by afflicting him with tzaraas. Rav Hirsch (to Vayikra 13:2) links צ-ר-ע to ז-ר-ע (zorea, sowing) and ז-ר-ה (zoreh, winnowing or throwing), by the interchange of tzadi with zayin and ayin with hei: a seed hidden underground bursts out visibly, and so a spot on the skin is the outward showing of a rot rooted within. Rabbi Moshe David Valle (Kise Nachon to Melachim I 11:26) parses tzaraas as eis, time, with tzar, constriction. Rabbi Avi Kobernick reads the root against its metathesised neighbours: against ע-צ-ר (aritz and ne'eratz, powerful, awesome and esteemed, but also, in ta'arotz, broken and subdued, the two senses reconciled on his reading because a man who views his enemies as powerful is thereby broken in his own eyes), tzaraas is its opposite, since sickness is bodily weakness; and with צ-ע-ר (tzaar, pain), since the affliction is a burden borne, which fits Toras Kohanim to Vayikra 13:2, that the sufferer is pained by it and so are those who see him; the column adds that Chazal's use of tzaar there may hint that they too linked the words. Mr. Moshe Ossi (Al Katzeh HaLashon) suggests a connection to שׂ-ר-ע, expansion, the root of sarua, the overextended limb that disqualifies a Kohen or a korban (Vayikra 21:18, 22:23) and of meihistarea in Yeshayahu 28:20, since tzaraas spreads.
Two names seem to come from the root: the city of Tzarah in Dan's territory, named eleven times in Tanach, and Tzeruah, mother of Yeravam ben Nevat (Melachim I 11:26). Alfred Jones, The Proper Names of the Old Testament Scriptures Expounded and Illustrated (London, 1856), p. 376, notes that her name is etymologically related to tzaraas but does not explain why she should bear so odd a name. Midrash Tadshe (Otzar Midrashim p. 481) does: her name alludes to her son's bringing a spirit of tzaraas on the nation and turning their hearts from Hashem. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber of London, explaining that midrash: Yeravam put a rebellious spirit in the air that induced his generation to sin with him. Rabbi Moshe David Valle speculates that perhaps she was literally afflicted and passed her impurity to him. Pseudo-Rashi (to Divrei HaYamim II 4:17): she was a widow, and when her husband died he spread impurity through the tent to all in it, as a metzora is a conduit of impurity.
nega (נגע)
From נ-ג-ע (Ibn Janach, Radak) or the two-letter ג-ע (Ibn Saruk). The root carries touching (nogea), reaching (hagaah), and striking (naga). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes contact as the core: the meeting point of two things; reaching is bringing that contact about, and striking is contact of the harmful kind, whether from a man's hand or from a malady sent upon him. A nega is thus the point where the man and the affliction meet. Rav Hirsch (to Vayikra 13:2) makes the Divine element definitional: a leprous disease that is merely pathological, and not plainly an affliction from Above, falls outside the definition of a nega. He also (to Bereishis 20:5) pairs נ-ג-ע with נ-ג-ח, ayin interchanging with ches: negichah, goring, is a violent impact, negiah can be the lightest touch, and a nega is the nexus between a man and a Divine message meant to rouse him to teshuvah. The chassidishe adage on nega and oneg, the same letters reordered, turns on where one puts the ayin, that is, on how the eye sees what has come.
tzarua (צרוע) and metzora (מצורע)
Both are declensions of צ-ר-ע. Tzarua appears five times (Vayikra 5:2, 13:44-45, 14:3; Bamidbar 5:2), for instance where a leper may not eat terumah (Vayikra 22:4) or must be sent from the camp; metzora appears fifteen, including the opening of the purification laws (Vayikra 14:2), Naaman (Melachim II 5:1), Geichazi (5:27), and Uziyahu (Melachim II 15:5, Divrei HaYamim II 26:21-23). The feminine metzoraas is used of Moshe's hand (Shemos 4:6) and of Miriam (Bamidbar 12:10). For the four accounts of the alternation, see above. On the sins that bring tzaraas, Chazal list idolatry, immorality, murder, chillul Hashem, blasphemy, theft, misusing public property, haughtiness, lashon hara, stinginess, false testimony, a judge who perverts the law, swearing in vain, entering another's domain, evil thoughts, and causing strife between brothers (Vayikra Rabbah 17:3, Erachin 15b, Zohar Balak 206a, Tanchuma Metzora 4).
Rendering guidance
- Tzaraas is best left transliterated in a Torah context. "Leprosy" imports a modern diagnosis the sources do not make, and on Rav Hirsch's reading it names precisely the thing a nega is not.
- Nega: "spot" where the surface mark is meant, "affliction" where the blow is meant. Plural negaim; the masechta is Negaim.
- Trap: English "affliction" will absorb both tzaraas and nega, and the Arizal's whole distinction dies with it. In the doubled phrase nega tzaraas, translate two words, "a spot of tzaraas," never one.
- Second trap: "leper" absorbs tzarua and metzora alike. Where a passage turns on the man's stage (afflicted, healed, purified), mark the difference, for instance "one bearing the affliction" against "one under the laws of the metzora."
- Tzirah keeps "hornet" in a plain rendering of Shemos 23:28, Devarim 7:20, Yehoshua 24:12, with a note where Ibn Ezra's "malady" reading is being used.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Tazria/Metzora: Spot on (Tzar'at)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 Iyar 5785 (2025-05-03): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11793-tazriametzora-spot-on-tzarat.md. The published text is cut short at the source, breaking off mid-word inside Shadal's distinction between tzarua and metzora; what he said of metzora is not in the text we have, and nothing is supplied for it here. Primary loci the article cites: Vayikra 5:2, 13:2-3, 13:5, 13:9, 13:19, 13:20, 13:25, 13:27, 13:44-45, 13:47, 13:49, 13:59, 14:2-3, 14:32, 14:34, 21:18, 22:4, 22:23; Shemos 4:6, 23:28; Bamidbar 5:2, 12:10; Devarim 7:20, 24:8; Yeshayahu 28:20; Yehoshua 24:12; Melachim I 11:26; Melachim II 5:1-27, 15:5; Divrei HaYamim II 4:17, 26:19-23; Erachin 15b; Vayikra Rabbah 17:3; Toras Kohanim to Vayikra 13:2; Zohar Balak 206a; Tanchuma Metzora 4; Arizal, Shaar HaMitzvos, Tazria; Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim; Pappenheim, Yerios Shlomo. The comparative and academic material the article carries, Gesenius's Arabic derivation and Alfred Jones's 1856 volume on proper names, is reported here as the article reports it.