Discovery BoxLeviticus 22:3-6 
Context22:3 Say to them, ‘Throughout your generations, 1 if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings which the Israelites consecrate 2 to the Lord while he is impure, 3 that person must be cut off from before me. 4 I am the Lord. 22:4 No man 5 from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge 6 may eat the holy offerings until he becomes clean. The one 7 who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person, 8 or a man who has a seminal emission, 9 22:5 or a man who touches a swarming thing by which he becomes unclean, 10 or touches a person 11 by which he becomes unclean, whatever that person’s impurity 12 – 22:6 the person who touches any of these 13 will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water.
1 tn Heb “To your generations.”
2 tn The Piel (v. 2) and Hiphil (v. 3) forms of the verb קָדַשׁ (qadash) appear to be interchangeable in this context. Both mean “to consecrate” (Heb “make holy [or “sacred”]”).
3 tn Heb “and his impurity [is] on him”; NIV “is ceremonially unclean”; NAB, NRSV “while he is in a state of uncleanness.”
4 sn Regarding the “cut off” penalty, see the note on Lev 7:20. Cf. the interpretive translation of TEV “he can never again serve at the altar.”
5 tn Heb “Man man.” The reduplication is a way of saying “any man” (cf. Lev 15:2; 17:3, etc.), but with a negative command it means “No man” (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 147).
6 sn The diseases and discharges mentioned here are those described in Lev 13-15.
7 tn Heb “And the one.”
8 tn Heb “in all unclean of a person/soul”; for the Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) meaning “a [dead] person,” see the note on Lev 19:28.
9 tn Heb “or a man who goes out from him a lying of seed.”
10 tn Heb “which there shall be uncleanness to him.”
11 tn The Hebrew term for “person” here is אָדָם (adam, “human being”), which could either a male or a female person.
12 tn Heb “to all his impurity.” The phrase refers to the impurity of the person whom the man touches to become unclean (see the previous clause). To clarify this, the translation uses “that person’s” rather than “his.”
13 sn The phrase “any of these” refers back to the unclean things touched in vv. 4b-5.
