Leviticus 11:34

Summary

The verse establishes that any food capable of being eaten becomes unclean if water comes upon it, and any drink capable of being drunk becomes unclean if it is in a vessel (of the type previously described as unclean). The syntax builds two parallel conditional clauses, one for food and one for liquids, each ending in the same verb of ritual impurity.

Key words

• 'okhel ("food", H0400) — masculine singular noun with the definite article, designating food in general as the category under discussion.
• ye'akhel ("it will be eaten", H0398) — niphal (passive) imperfect: the food is described not by what it is but by its capacity for being eaten, a defining relative clause.
• yavo' ("it will come", H0935G) — qal imperfect describing the water's action of "coming upon" the food; the verb marks contact as a future/repeatable event.
• yitma' ("it will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, repeated twice (lines 12 and 21), marking the resulting state of impurity for both food and drink.
• mashqeh ("drink", H4945B) — masculine singular noun parallel to 'okhel, opening the second clause with the same construct pattern kol... 'asher.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel structures, each introduced by kol ("all/any", H3605) in construct form, followed by a noun ('okhel or mashqeh) and a relative clause with 'asher ("which", H0834A). This produces a chain: "any food that is eaten" and "any drink that is drunk," where the niphal verbs ye'akhel and yishatel do not add new information about identity but define the category by its potential use — this is a common Biblical Hebrew mechanism for expressing "usable/edible" or "drinkable" items in general, rather than referring to a specific object already mentioned.

For the food clause, a second relative clause is embedded: 'asher yavo' 'alav mayim ("which water will come upon it"), where the pronominal suffix on 'alav ("upon it", from H5921A + H9033) refers back to the food itself. This creates a conditional sense in the imperfect tense: whenever water comes into contact with such food, the result is yitma' ("it will become unclean"). The drink clause is shorter, lacking the explicit water-contact condition, and instead moves directly to location: bekhol-keli ("in any vessel", H9003 + H3605 + H3627), tying the impurity to the vessel context rather than repeating the water condition.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the conditional water-contact clause with ἐὰν ἐπέλθῃ ("if it should come upon"), making explicit a conditional nuance that the Hebrew imperfect yavo' carries implicitly without a formal conditional particle. The Vulgate similarly adds "si fusa fuerit" ("if it has been poured"), an explicit conditional construction absent as a distinct particle in the Hebrew text, which relies solely on the relative 'asher and the imperfect verb form to convey the same sense.