Leviticus 21:11

Summary

Leviticus 21:11 prohibits a specific person (contextually the high priest, per the surrounding verses) from approaching any corpse, and states that he must not defile himself even for his own father or mother.

Key words

• nafshot ("corpses of", H5315M) — feminine plural construct of nefesh ("soul/person"), here used with the sense of "dead bodies"; construct form links it to met ("dead"), producing "corpses of a dead person."
• met ("a dead [person]", H4191) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the state of being dead; functions as a substantive modifying nafshot.
• yavo' ("he will go", H0935G) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, expressing future/ongoing prohibition ("he will not enter/approach").
• le'aviv ("for his father", H0001G + H9023) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," marking the specific relative excluded from the prohibition's exception.
• yitamma' ("he will make himself unclean", H2930A) — hithpael imperfect, third person masculine singular; the hithpael stem marks this as a reflexive action — the subject actively renders himself impure, not merely becomes impure passively.

What the text says

The verse divides into two parallel clauses, each built on the negation lo' ("not", H3808) followed by an imperfect verb. The first clause, ve'al kol-nafshot met lo' yavo' ("and to any corpses of a dead person he will not go"), uses the construct chain kol-nafshot met ("any corpses of a dead [person]") to generalize the prohibition to all corpses without exception. The verb yavo' (H0935G, qal imperfect) frames this as an ongoing prohibition against approach or entry.

The second clause, lo' yitamma' ("he will not make himself unclean"), employs the hithpael stem of the root H2930A. The reflexive nuance of the hithpael is grammatically significant: it frames impurity as something the subject would bring upon himself through action, rather than a state that simply happens to him. This clause explicitly includes le'aviv ("for his father") and ule'immo ("and for his mother"), each marked with construct nouns and pronominal suffixes, specifying that even these close relatives do not create an exception to the prohibition.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first verb as εἰσελεύσεται ("he will enter"), matching the sense of yavo' (H0935G) as approach/entry. The Vulgate adds omnino ("entirely/completely"), an intensifying adverb not present in the Hebrew text, which strengthens the prohibition beyond what the Hebrew imperfect alone conveys.