Leviticus 11:40

Summary

The verse establishes two parallel cases of ritual impurity connected to the carcass (nivlatah, "its carcass", H5038) of forbidden animals: one who eats from it, and one who carries/lifts it. Both must wash their clothes and remain unclean until evening.

Key words

• 'oKhel ("[who] eats", H0398) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as a substantive ("the one who eats"); paired with the definite article ha (H9009) it forms "the one eating."
• nivlaTah ("its carcass", H5038) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a 3rd person feminine pronominal suffix ("her/its"), referring back to the animal category discussed earlier in the chapter.
• yekhaBes ("he will wash", H3526) — piel imperfect, 3rd masculine singular; the piel stem gives an intensive or thorough sense to the washing action, distinct from a simple qal wash.
• taMe' ("he will be unclean", H2930) — qal sequential perfect (vav + perfect continuing the narrative sequence), marking the resulting state after the washing action.
• no.Se' ("[who] carries", H5375) — qal participle, masculine singular, parallel in form to 'oKhel, designating the second category of person affected.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two mirrored clauses, each opening with the definite article plus a qal participle (ha-'oKhel, "the one eating"; ha-no.Se', "the one carrying") functioning as the subject. Each subject is followed by the same verbal sequence: yekhaBes bega.Dav ("he will wash his garments") and ve-taMe' 'ad-ha'Arev ("and he will be unclean until the evening"). This repetition creates a structural parallelism, treating eating and carrying as two distinct but equally consequential contacts with the same carcass. The pronominal suffix -ah on nivlaTah ("its carcass") ties the sentence back to the antecedent animal category being discussed, so the referent is not restated but assumed from context.

The switch from participle (describing the person and action as ongoing/generic) to imperfect (yekhaBes, future/durative) and then to perfect with vav (taMe', marking sequence) reflects a common Biblical Hebrew legal-narrative pattern: a generic subject introduced by a participle, followed by verb forms that lay out the resulting obligations in sequence.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds καὶ λούσεται ὕδατι ("and he will bathe with water") in the second clause (concerning the one who carries the carcass), an element not present in the Hebrew text, which for both clauses only requires washing garments (yekhaBes bega.Dav) without mentioning bathing in water. The Vulgate condenses both Hebrew clauses into a single sentence using sive ("or"), merging "eating" and "carrying" into one continuous statement, whereas the Hebrew presents them as two fully parallel, separately repeated clauses.