Discovery BoxLeviticus 22:1-9 
Context22:1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 22:2 “Tell Aaron and his sons that they must deal respectfully with the holy offerings 1 of the Israelites, which they consecrate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name. 2 I am the Lord. 22:3 Say to them, ‘Throughout your generations, 3 if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings which the Israelites consecrate 4 to the Lord while he is impure, 5 that person must be cut off from before me. 6 I am the Lord. 22:4 No man 7 from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge 8 may eat the holy offerings until he becomes clean. The one 9 who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person, 10 or a man who has a seminal emission, 11 22:5 or a man who touches a swarming thing by which he becomes unclean, 12 or touches a person 13 by which he becomes unclean, whatever that person’s impurity 14 – 22:6 the person who touches any of these 15 will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water. 22:7 When the sun goes down he will be clean, and afterward he may eat from the holy offerings, because they are his food. 22:8 He must not eat an animal that has died of natural causes 16 or an animal torn by beasts and thus become unclean by it. I am the Lord. 22:9 They must keep my charge so that they do not incur sin on account of it 17 and therefore die 18 because they profane it. I am the Lord who sanctifies them.
1 tn Heb “holy things,” which means the “holy offerings” in this context, as the following verses show. The referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “from the holy things of the sons of Israel, and they shall not profane my holy name, which they are consecrating to me.” The latter (relative) clause applies to the “the holy things of the sons of Israel” (the first clause), not the
3 tn Heb “To your generations.”
4 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”]”).
5 tn Heb “and his impurity [is] on him”; NIV “is ceremonially unclean”; NAB, NRSV “while he is in a state of uncleanness.”
6 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.”
7 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).
8 sn The diseases and discharges mentioned here are those described in Lev 13-15.
9 tn Heb “And the one.”
10 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.
11 tn Heb “or a man who goes out from him a lying of seed.”
12 tn Heb “which there shall be uncleanness to him.”
13 tn The Hebrew term for “person” here is אָדָם (adam, “human being”), which could either a male or a female person.
14 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.”
15 sn The phrase “any of these” refers back to the unclean things touched in vv. 4b-5.
16 tn Heb “a carcass,” referring to the carcass of an animal that has died on its own, not the carcass of an animal slaughtered for sacrifice or killed by wild beasts. This has been clarified in the translation by supplying the phrase “of natural causes”; cf. NAB “that has died of itself”; TEV “that has died a natural death.”
17 tn Heb “and they will not lift up on it sin.” The pronoun “it” (masculine) apparently refers to any item of food that belongs to the category of “holy offerings” (see above).
18 tn Heb “and die in it.”
