Leviticus 22:5

Summary

Leviticus 22:5 describes two situations of ritual impurity: contact with a sheretz ("swarming thing", H8318) that is unclean, or contact with a person ('adam, H0120G) who is unclean. The verse specifies that the impurity transferred corresponds to "all his uncleanness" (kol tum'ato, H3605 + H2932).

Key words

• 'ish ("anyone", H0376I) — masculine singular noun, the subject who performs the action of touching in the first clause.
• yigga' ("he will touch", H5060) — Qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; the imperfect aspect marks a potential/future or repeated action rather than a single completed event.
• sheretz ("swarming thing", H8318) — masculine singular noun designating the creature category involved in the first case of contact.
• yitma' ("it is/becomes unclean", H2930A) — Qal imperfect, occurring twice (once for the sheretz, once for the 'adam); each instance is followed by the preposition-plus-suffix lo ("to/for him"), an idiomatic pairing that expresses the result of becoming unclean "with respect to him," i.e., the person who touches.
• tum'ato ("his uncleanness", H2932) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, closing the verse by summarizing the totality ("all") of the uncleanness at stake.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel conditional clauses joined by the conjunction 'ov ("or", H0176A), each introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("who/which", H0834A). The first clause centers on 'ish... yigga' be-khol-sheretz 'asher yitma'-lo — "a man who touches any swarming thing which is unclean to him." The second clause repeats the same syntactic pattern with 'adam ("person", H0120G) as the object of contact instead of sheretz. In both clauses, the Qal imperfect verb yitma' is followed by the preposition le ("to", H9005) plus a third-person pronominal suffix (lo, "him"), a construction that ties the state of uncleanness directly to the person who has made contact, rather than describing the creature or person touched as inherently unclean in isolation. The final phrase, le-khol tum'ato ("according to all his uncleanness"), uses the construct chain kol + tum'ah + suffix to indicate that the resulting impurity is total or comprehensive, covering whatever specific uncleanness was present in the source of contact.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first clause with an explicit adjective, "ἑρπετοῦ ἀκαθάρτου" ("unclean creeping thing"), attaching uncleanness directly to the sheretz, whereas the Hebrew places the uncleanness in a separate relative clause ('asher yitma'-lo) tied to the toucher rather than as an inherent quality stated up front. The Vulgate's "quodlibet immundum cujus tactus est sordidus" similarly restructures the second Hebrew clause about 'adam, phrasing it as "whatever unclean thing whose touch is defiled" rather than preserving the Hebrew's parallel construction of a person who "becomes unclean to him."