Numbers 19:22

Summary

The verse states that anything touched by an unclean person becomes unclean, and that the person who touches it likewise becomes unclean until evening. The Hebrew repeats the same verb root twice, once in masculine and once in feminine form, matching the grammatical gender of what becomes impure.

Key words

• yigga' ("he will touch", H5060) — qal imperfect, describing the unclean person's act of touching an object; the verb's subject is ha.Tame', not the object itself.
• ha.Tame' ("the unclean [person]", H2931) — adjective used substantively as the subject of the first clause; grammatically it is placed after the relative clause it governs, a common Biblical Hebrew word-order pattern.
• yitma' ("it will be unclean", H2930A) — qal imperfect, masculine, agreeing with the masculine noun kol ("all/anything") from the start of the verse.
• Nefesh ("person", H5315J) — feminine singular noun; its grammatical gender determines the form of the following verb and participle.
• no.Ga'at ("the one touching", H5060) — qal active participle, feminine singular, agreeing with Nefesh; the same root as yigga' but here functioning as a substantive description of the toucher rather than a finite verb.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two parallel clauses built on the same verbal root naga' ("to touch", H5060) and the same stative root tama' ("to be unclean", H2930A). In the first clause, kol asher yigga'-bo ha.Tame' ("all that the unclean [person] touches"), the grammatical subject ha.Tame' appears at the end of the relative clause rather than immediately after asher, while the pronominal suffix bo ("in it") on the preposition be refers back to kol ("all"). The predicate yitma' ("it will be unclean") is masculine, matching kol.

The second clause shifts to a feminine construction because its subject, ha.Nefesh ("the person/soul"), is grammatically feminine. The participle ha.no.Ga'at ("the one touching") agrees with Nefesh in gender and number, and the resulting verb titma' ("she will be unclean") likewise takes the feminine form — though built on the identical root as yitma' in the first clause. This grammatical repetition with gender variation lets the Hebrew apply one rule to both an object and a person without changing vocabulary, only verb and participle agreement. The temporal phrase ad ha.'Arev ("until the evening", H6153) closes the second clause, marking the duration of the impurity for the person who touched the unclean object.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the first clause causatively: "Quidquid tetigerit immundus, immundum faciet" ("whatever the unclean one touches, he will make unclean"), using faciet ("he will make"). This differs from the Hebrew yitma' ("it will be unclean"), which is a stative verb describing a resulting condition rather than an action performed by the unclean person upon the object. The Septuagint follows the Hebrew more closely with ἀκάθαρτον ἔσται ("it will be unclean"), preserving the stative sense rather than a causative one.