Leviticus 11:31

Summary

Leviticus 11:31 closes a list of swarming/crawling creatures by declaring them unclean, and adds a rule about contact: anyone who touches their carcasses becomes unclean until evening.

Key words

• 'Elleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle opening the verse, pointing back to the list of creatures named in the preceding verses.
• temeim ("unclean", H2931) — masculine plural adjective, agreeing with the plural referent "these," predicating uncleanness on the whole group at once.
• sheretz ("swarming thing", H8318) — masculine singular noun in construct with kol ("every", H3605), forming "every swarming thing," a collective category rather than a list of individual species.
• noge'a ("[one who] touches", H5060) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as a substantive ("the one touching"/"whoever touches"), describing an ongoing or generic action rather than a single completed event.
• yitma' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, marking the resulting state as future/ongoing, i.e., the consequence that follows contact.

What the text says

The verse opens with 'elleh ("these") followed by ha-temeim ("the unclean ones"), a nominal clause with no explicit verb "to be" — Biblical Hebrew regularly omits it in equational statements. The phrase lakhem ("to/for you") marks the classification as relevant to the addressees, and bekhol-hasheretz ("among every swarming thing") specifies the domain to which the ruling applies, using sheretz as a general collective term rather than naming individual animals again.

The second half of the verse builds a conditional-type structure using a participle: kol-hanoge'a bahem ("every[one] touching them") functions like "whoever touches them," a common Hebrew way of expressing a general case without a conditional conjunction. The phrase bemotam ("in their death") is a construct chain — literally "in the death of them" — specifying the circumstance under which contact causes impurity: contact with the dead animal, not the living one. The main verb yitma' ("he will be unclean") is imperfect, expressing the resulting state as an ongoing or automatic consequence, and the temporal phrase 'ad-ha'arev ("until the evening") sets its duration.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sheretz with the phrase "τῶν ἑρπετῶν τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς" ("the creeping things upon the earth"), adding a locative specification ("upon the earth") not present in the Hebrew construct kol-hasheretz. The Vulgate renders bemotam ("in their death") as "morticina eorum" ("their carcasses"), turning the Hebrew construct phrase describing a circumstance ("when dead") into a noun referring to the corpses themselves, where the LXX instead uses a participle, "τεθνηκότων" ("having died"), agreeing with "them," closer to the Hebrew's circumstantial sense.