Leviticus 11:37

Summary

The verse addresses a case of contact between the carcass of an unclean animal and seed intended for sowing. If part of such a carcass falls upon seed that will be sown, the text declares the seed tahor ("pure/clean", H2889).

Key words

• yippol ("it will fall", H5307G) — qal imperfect, describing a hypothetical future/ongoing event: the falling of carcass matter.
• nivlatam ("their carcass", H5038) — feminine singular construct noun with 3rd person plural suffix ("their"), meaning "carcass of them," referring back to unclean creatures discussed earlier in the chapter.
• zera' zeru'a ("seed of sowing", H2233G + H2221) — a construct chain doubling the root for "sow/seed," emphasizing seed specifically designated for planting, not seed already harvested for food.
• yizzare'a ("it will be sown", H2232) — niphal (passive) imperfect, marking the seed as the one that undergoes the action of being sown, reinforcing that this is agricultural seed in its intended use.
• tahor ("pure", H2889) — masculine singular adjective, the predicate stating the resulting status of the seed.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conditional particle ve-khi ("and if", H9002 + H3588A), introducing a conditional clause. The subject of yippol ("it will fall", H5307G) is left grammatically unspecified but is drawn min-nivlatam ("from their carcass", H9006 + H5038) — a partitive construction indicating that some portion or piece of the carcass falls, not necessarily the whole carcass.

The object of the falling is kol-zera' zeru'a ("all seed of sowing", H3605 + H2233G + H2221), a doubled root construction (zera' / zeru'a) that grammatically emphasizes the seed's function — it is seed prepared for the act of sowing. This is further specified by the relative clause asher yizzare'a ("which will be sown", H0834A + H2232), using a niphal passive verb to describe the seed as one that will undergo sowing, distinguishing it from seed already in use as food or in another state.

The apodosis of the conditional is short: tahor hu' ("pure [is] it", H2889 + H1931), a nominal clause with adjective plus independent pronoun, stating the seed's legal status directly without a verb "to be," which is typical of Hebrew predicate adjective clauses.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Si ceciderit super sementem, non polluet eam, "it will not defile it") phrases the outcome negatively — the seed "will not be defiled" — whereas the Hebrew and LXX (katharon estai, "it will be clean") state the outcome positively, as a declaration of purity rather than an absence of defilement. The Vulgate also omits explicit mention of the carcass's partitive nature (min-nivlatam) and the doubled construction zera' zeru'a, simplifying it to sementem ("seed/planting").