Deuteronomy 15:22

Summary

The verse instructs that the animal in question is to be eaten "within your gates," and specifies that both a person who is ritually unclean and one who is clean may eat it together, comparing this permission to eating a gazelle or a deer — animals not subject to sanctuary offering restrictions.

Key words

• sha'arekha ("your gates", H8179H) — construct plural noun with 2nd person suffix, indicating the enclosed settlement/town space where the eating is to occur, contrasted implicitly with sanctuary space.
• tokhalennu ("you will eat it", H0398) — qal imperfect with 3rd person masculine suffix "it/him", a single verb carrying both the action and its object, addressed to "you" (singular).
• hattame' ("the unclean", H2931) — adjective with definite article, functioning as a substantive ("the unclean one"), naming a category of person by ritual status.
• hattahor ("the clean", H2889) — parallel adjective+article construction to hattame', forming a merism (unclean/clean) that spans the whole range of ritual states.
• yachdav ("alike/together", H3162B) — adverb modifying the preceding pair, asserting that both categories act identically, without distinction in this eating.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a locative prepositional phrase, bi-sha'arekha ("in your gates", H9003+H8179H+H9021), placed before the verb for emphasis on location. The verb tokhalennu (H0398) is second person masculine singular, addressed to an individual (or collectively to the audience as "you"), and it already contains the object "it" as a suffix, so no separate object word is needed. This single clause covers the main instruction: eat it within the gates.

The second clause shifts subject: hattame' ve-hattahor ("the unclean and the clean", H2931+H2889) becomes the grammatical subject of an implied verb (no new verb form appears in the Hebrew clause; the earlier tokhalennu is understood to extend to this subject as well). The adverb yachdav (H3162B) stresses simultaneity/equivalence — both groups partake without distinction. The final comparison, ka-tzevi ve-kha-ayyal ("like the gazelle and like the deer", H6643B+H0354), uses the preposition ka- (H9004) twice, drawing an analogy to non-sacrificial wild game, whose consumption carries no purity restriction.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sha'arekha ("your gates") as "πόλεσίν σου" ("your cities"), a broader term than the Hebrew's specific "gates." The LXX and Vulgate both supply a second explicit verb (Greek ἔδεται, "shall eat"; Latin vescentur, "they will feed") for the unclean/clean subject, where the Hebrew leaves the second clause without a repeated verb, relying on the initial tokhalennu to govern the whole sentence. The Vulgate's plural eis ("them") corresponds to the Hebrew singular suffix -nu ("it") attached to tokhalennu.