Leviticus 5:3
אוֹ כִי יִגַּע בְּטֻמְאַת אָדָם לְכֹל טֻמְאָתוֹ אֲשֶׁר יִטְמָא בָּהּ וְנֶעְלַם מִמֶּנּוּ וְהוּא יָדַע וְאָשֵֽׁם׃
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✦ The same verse in five languages
א֣וֹ כִ֤י יִגַּע֙ בְּטֻמְאַ֣ת אָדָ֔ם לְכֹל֙ טֻמְאָת֔וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר יִטְמָ֖א בָּ֑הּ וְנֶעְלַ֣ם מִמֶּ֔נּוּ וְה֥וּא יָדַ֖ע וְאָשֵֽׁם׃
ἢ ἅψηται ἀπὸ ἀκαθαρσίας ἀνθρώπου, ἀπὸ πάσης ἀκαθαρσίας αὐτοῦ ἧς ἂν ἁψάμενος μιανθῇ, καὶ ἔλαθεν αὐτόν, μετὰ τοῦτο δὲ γνῷ, καὶ πλημμελήσῃ·
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
et si tetigerit quidquam de immunditia hominis juxta omnem impuritatem, qua pollui solet, oblitaque cognoverit postea, subjacebit delicto.
“‘O si toca la impureza de un ser humano, cualquier impureza con la que pueda contaminarse, y no se da cuenta; cuando lo sepa, entonces será culpable.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
O si tocare á hombre inmundo en cualquiera inmundicia suya de que es inmundo, y no lo echare de ver; si después llega á saberlo, será culpable.
Or if he touches human uncleanness — anything by which one becomes unclean — even if he is unaware of it, when he realizes it, he is guilty.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Leviticus 5:3 describes a case of unwitting contamination: a person touches human uncleanness of any kind, is unaware of it at the time, but later becomes aware — and at that point incurs guilt. The verse specifies the sequence of touching, forgetting, and knowing as the condition for culpability.
Key words
- yi.Ga' ("he will touch", H5060) — qal imperfect, denoting a future/ongoing potential action; sets up the conditional case.
- tum.'At ("[the] uncleanness of", H2932) — feminine singular construct, linking to 'a.Dam ("a human", H0120G) to specify the source of contamination.
- ne'.Lam ("it will be hidden", H5956) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the uncleanness is grammatically the subject that "is hidden" from the person, rather than the person actively forgetting.
- ya.Da' ("he knew", H3045) — qal perfect, marking the moment of realization that shifts the case from unwitting to known.
- 'a.Shem ("he will be guilty", H0816) — qal sequential perfect, the resulting legal state once knowledge occurs.
What the text says
The Hebrew builds a conditional chain using the particle khi ("if", H3588A) followed by a string of verbs connected by sequential vav forms. The structure moves from yi.Ga' ("he will touch") through the niphal ne'.Lam ("it will be hidden") to ya.Da' ("he knew") and finally 'a.Shem ("he will be guilty"). The niphal form of ne'.Lam is notable: the grammatical subject is the uncleanness itself, which "is hidden" from the person (mi.Me.nu, "from him"), rather than a phrase meaning the person forgot. This construction places the person in a passive relationship to the concealment — the state of unawareness happens to him.
The clause le.khol tum.'a.To ("to all his uncleanness", H3605 + H2932) with the construct chain and pronominal suffix o ("his", H9023) generalizes the source of impurity to any kind of uncleanness a person carries, not a single specific type. The relative clause 'a.Sher yit.Ma' ba ("which he will be unclean by it", H0834A + H2930A) reinforces this by defining the uncleanness relationally rather than naming a specific substance.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders yi.Ga' ("he will touch") with ἅψηται, followed by ἀπὸ ("from") governing ἀκαθαρσίας ("uncleanness"), and adds μιανθῇ ("he is defiled") as a result clause not explicitly present as a separate verb in the Hebrew, where the result is instead expressed through the sequence ne'.Lam/ya.Da'. The Vulgate's oblitaque cognoverit ("having forgotten, he later knows") introduces "forgetting" (oblita) as an active verbal idea, whereas the Hebrew niphal ne'.Lam frames the concealment as happening to the person rather than as an act of forgetting he performs.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.