Leviticus 7:21

Summary

The verse establishes that a person who touches something ritually unclean — whether human uncleanness, an unclean animal, or any unclean detestable thing — and then eats meat from a peace offering (shelamim) belonging to Yehovah, is to be cut off from his people. The clause structure is conditional: contact with impurity followed by consumption of sacrificial meat triggers the consequence.

Key words

• Nefesh ("anyone / person", H5315J) — feminine singular noun, used twice: first generically for "anyone" (subject of the condition), later with the article ha- and demonstrative hiv' ("that person") to specify the same individual as the one facing the consequence.
• ti-Ga' ("it will touch", H5060) — qal imperfect, marking the touching as an ongoing/potential future action introduced by the conditional particle ki ("if", H3588A).
• tum'at ("uncleanness of", H2932) — feminine singular construct noun, linking to 'adam ("humankind", H0120G) to form "uncleanness of a human."
• 'akhal ("he will eat", H0398) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain after the touching-clause; grammatically it advances the sequence of actions rather than standing as an independent statement.
• nikhre-Tah ("it will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect, describing the consequence as something that happens to the person rather than an action the person performs.

What the text says

The sentence opens with ve-nefesh ki-tiga' ("and a person, if it touches"), a classic casuistic legal formula: a generic subject (nefesh) is introduced, followed by a conditional clause using the imperfect verb tiga'. The object of touching is expanded through three parallel prepositional phrases joined by 'o ("or", H0176A): uncleanness of 'adam ("humankind"), an unclean behemah ("livestock"), and an unclean sheqetz ("detestable thing"). Each phrase uses the adjective tame' ("unclean", H2931) in agreement with its noun's gender, showing the same impurity concept applied across human, animal, and other categories.

The narrative vav on ve-'akhal ("and he will eat") shifts the verb form from imperfect to sequential perfect, a common Biblical Hebrew construction where the second action in a conditional chain is expressed this way to show it follows logically/temporally from the first (touching, then eating). The eaten substance is specified as mi-besar-zevach ha-shelamim ("from the meat of the sacrifice of the peace offerings"), with the relative clause 'asher la-YHWH ("which belongs to Yehovah") marking the offering's dedication. The consequence, ve-nikhretah ha-nefesh ha-hiv' me-'ammeiha ("and that person will be cut off from her kinspeople"), uses the niphal form of karat to present the cutting-off as happening to the subject, and closes by referring back to the same nefesh introduced at the start, now marked definite and specified with the demonstrative hiv' ("that").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew, Vulgate, and Spanish translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE) all present the same conditional structure: touching impurity followed by eating sacrificial meat results in being cut off from the people. The Vulgate's interibit de populis suis ("he will perish from his peoples") renders the niphal nikhretah with a verb of perishing rather than a more literal "cut off," though the outcome described is comparable. The LXX text supplied here does not correspond to this verse's content at all — it describes a priest offering fat on the altar and portions going to Aaron and his sons, matching a different passage in Leviticus 7 rather than the touching/eating-impurity law present in the Hebrew, Vulgate, and Spanish versions given.