² sn Regarding “clean” versus “unclean,” see the note on Lev 10:10.

² sn See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1971): 1-15.

⁴ tn Grk “met him from the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.” When this is converted to normal English word order (“a man met him from the tombs with an unclean spirit”) it sounds as if “with an unclean spirit” modifies “the tombs.” Likewise, “a man with an unclean spirit from the tombs met him” implies that the unclean spirit came from the tombs, while the Greek text is clear that it is the man who had the unclean spirit who came from the tombs. To make this clear a second verb, “came,” is supplied in English: “came from the tombs and met him.”

⁴ tn Heb “[an] unclean”; or “[an] impure.” This fate would be especially humiliating for a priest, who was to distinguish between the ritually clean and unclean (see Lev 10:10).

² tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

² tn Or “and ate with.” It was table fellowship and the possibility of eating unclean food that disturbed them.

² tn Grk “For [in the case of] many who had unclean spirits, they were coming out, crying in a loud voice.”

⁵ sn The woman was most likely suffering from a vaginal hemorrhage, in which case her bleeding would make her ritually unclean.

³ tn Or “Israel has become corrupt”; cf. NCV “has made itself unclean,” and TEV “are unfit to worship me.”

¹ tn This sense is conveyed by the repetition of “man”—“if a man, a man becomes unclean.”

¹ sn The phrase “any of these” refers back to the unclean things touched in vv. 4b-5.

¹ tn Heb “All the bed which the man with a discharge sits on it shall be unclean”; cf. NLT “Any bedding.”

² tn Heb “and all the vessel which he sits on it shall be unclean”; NASB “everything on which he sits.”

⁶ tn Heb “he shall make him unclean.” The verb is the Piel of טָמֵא (tameʾ) “to be unclean.” Here it is a so-called “declarative” Piel (i.e., “to declare unclean”), but it also implies that the person is put into the category of actually being “unclean” by the pronouncement itself (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 175; cf. the corresponding opposite in v. 6 below).

² sn For a study of the Levitical terminology of “clean” and “unclean,” see L. E. Toombs, IDB 1:643.

³ sn Tremper Longman (Jeremiah, Lamentations [New International Biblical Commentary], 384) notes that the priests are unclean by the blood on their garments, but blood from wounds did not make a person unclean. Murder made a person guilty but not ceremonially unclean. Jeremiah chose the vocabulary of ceremonial defilement to stress the wrongness of what they did.

³ tn Literally a relative pronoun, “who.” In English, however, a relative clause (“bringing the sick and those troubled by unclean spirits, who were all being healed”) could be understood to refer only to the second group (meaning only those troubled by unclean spirits were being healed) or even that the unclean spirits were being healed. To avoid this ambiguity the pronoun “they” was used to begin a new English sentence.

⁶ sn God has shown me…unclean. Peter sees the significance of his vision as not about food, but about open fellowship between Jewish Christians and Gentiles.

³ sn When the dogs came and licked his sores it meant that he was unclean. See the negative image of Rev 22:15 that draws on this picture.

³ sn To a Jew, being sent to the field to feed pigs would be an insult, since pigs were considered unclean animals (Lev 11:7).