Numbers 19:20

Summary

The verse states that a person who becomes unclean and fails to purify himself will be cut off from the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of Yehovah. The reason given is that the water of impurity was not sprinkled on him, so he remains unclean.

Key words

• yit.Ma' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, describing the ongoing or future state of becoming ritually impure.
• yit.cha.Ta' ("he will purify himself", H2398) — hithpael imperfect, reflexive form indicating the person must act upon himself to remove impurity; its negation (lo') marks the failure to do so.
• nikh.re.Tah ("it will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal sequential perfect, passive form describing the consequence enacted upon the Ne.fesh ("person", H5315J); the niphal removes the agent, leaving the action impersonal.
• ti.Me' ("he has made unclean", H2930A) — piel perfect, intensive active form contrasting with the earlier qal yit.Ma'; here the person is presented as the one who defiles the sanctuary, not merely becoming unclean himself.
• zo.Rak ("it has been sprinkled", H2236) — pual perfect, intensive passive, negated by lo', stating that the ritual act of sprinkling was not performed on him.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional-causal chain introduced by 'Ish 'a.Sher- ("a person who", H0376G + H0834A), followed by two parallel imperfect verbs — yit.Ma' and yit.cha.Ta' — the second negated by Lo' (H3808), setting up the protasis: uncleanness combined with failure at self-purification (hithpael, reflexive). The apodosis begins with the narrative ve (H9001) attached to nikh.re.Tah, a niphal sequential perfect, which grammatically continues the sequence from the imperfects and expresses the resulting state — the Ne.fesh ha.Hiv' ("that person", H5315J + H1931) being cut off mi.Tokh ha.Kahal ("from among the assembly", H8432 + H6951).

The causal clause introduced by ki (H3588A) gives the reasoning twice, in parallel construction: first, the person's own action, 'et-mik.Dash Yehovah ti.Me' ("he has made unclean the sanctuary of Yehovah"), using the piel perfect ti.Me', an intensive active form contrasting with the earlier passive/stative yit.Ma'. Second, a passive statement about ritual failure: mei ni.Dah lo'-zo.Rak 'a.Lav ("water of impurity has not been sprinkled on him"), using the pual perfect zo.Rak, negated. The verse closes with the adjective ta.Me' ("unclean", H2931) plus the pronoun Hu' ("he", H1931), restating his status as a simple nominal clause rather than a verbal one, giving a flat, unresolved conclusion: "unclean [is] he."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mik.Dash Yehovah ("sanctuary of Yehovah") as τὰ ἅρα Κυρίου ("the things of the Lord" / "the sacred things"), a different lexical choice than the Hebrew's direct reference to the mik.Dash ("sanctuary", H4720). The Vulgate's "sanctuarium Domini polluit" follows the Hebrew's mik.Dash more closely. The Vulgate omits the Ne.fesh ha.Hiv' wording found in Hebrew and LXX (ψυχὴ ἐκείνη), instead using "anima illius" without repeating "that" as an explicit demonstrative construction matching the Hebrew's ha.Hiv' ("the — she/that", H1931).