Leviticus 7:20

Summary

Leviticus 7:20 states that a person who eats meat from a peace offering (zevach shelamim) dedicated to Yehovah while in a state of uncleanness will be "cut off" from their kinspeople. The verse links ritual impurity, consumption of sacred meat, and a specific legal consequence expressed through a passive verb form.

Key words

• Nefesh ("person", H5315J) — grammatically feminine noun, functioning as the subject of the sentence; it reappears in v.22 with the feminine demonstrative hiv' ("that", H1931) and the feminine suffix in ameiha, showing the Hebrew maintains grammatical gender concord even though the referent (any person, male or female) is generic.
• Tokhal ("it will eat", H0398) — Qal imperfect, third feminine singular, agreeing with nefesh; the imperfect aspect marks the action as not-yet-completed or hypothetical/conditional ("whoever eats").
• Tum'ato ("his uncleanness", H2932) — a construct noun with pronominal suffix, forming a nominal clause with the following preposition alav ("upon him", H5921A) with no verb "to be" expressed; Hebrew states the condition as a static fact rather than an active verb.
• Nikhretah ("it will be cut off", H3772I) — Niphal (passive) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence begun by the earlier imperfect; the passive voice leaves the agent of the cutting-off unstated.
• Me-ammeiha ("from her kinspeople", H5971B) — plural construct noun with third feminine singular suffix, again agreeing grammatically with nefesh, hence "her" people rather than "his."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in two syntactic blocks joined by ve- ("and", H9001). The first block is a relative clause: "the person who eats meat from the sacrifice of peace offerings which belongs to Yehovah, and his/her uncleanness is upon him/her" (ve-tum'ato alav). This clause has no finite verb "to be" — impurity is stated as a condition attached to the person via a construct-plus-preposition structure, not as an event. The second block begins with the sequential Niphal perfect nikhretah, which in the ve-+perfect chain functions as a future/consequential action: "and [then] that person will be cut off." The passive form does not specify who performs the cutting-off. Throughout, nefesh retains feminine grammatical agreement (hi, ameiha), a feature not visible in gender-neutral or masculine-default translations.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the two-part Hebrew condition ("who eats... and his uncleanness is upon him") as a single adjectival phrase, anima polluta ("polluted soul"), collapsing the nominal clause into a modifier rather than preserving it as a separate stated condition. The Septuagint text supplied for this entry does not correspond to the Hebrew content of this verse — it describes fat and liver portions being brought as offerings, indicating a mismatch in the provided LXX passage rather than a translational divergence on this specific verse.