Text -- Leviticus 22:1-11 (NET)

Regulations for the Eating of Priestly Stipends

22:1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 22:2 “Tell Aaron and his sons that they must deal respectfully with the holy offerings of the Israelites, which they consecrate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name. I am the Lord. 22:3 Say to them, ‘Throughout your generations, if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings which the Israelites consecrate to the Lord while he is impure, that person must be cut off from before me. I am the Lord. 22:4 No man from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge may eat the holy offerings until he becomes clean. The one who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person, or a man who has a seminal emission, 22:5 or a man who touches a swarming thing by which he becomes unclean, or touches a person by which he becomes unclean, whatever that person’s impurity– 22:6 the person who touches any of these will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water. 22:7 When the sun goes down he will be clean, and afterward he may eat from the holy offerings, because they are his food. 22:8 He must not eat an animal that has died of natural causes or an animal torn by beasts and thus become unclean by it. I am the Lord. 22:9 They must keep my charge so that they do not incur sin on account of it and therefore die because they profane it. I am the Lord who sanctifies them. 22:10 “‘No lay person may eat anything holy. Neither a priest’s lodger nor a hired laborer may eat anything holy, 22:11 but if a priest buys a person with his own money, that person may eat the holy offerings, and those born in the priest’s own house may eat his food.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Lev 22:2

¹ tn Heb “holy things,” which means the “holy offerings” in this context, as the following verses show. The referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn Heb “from the holy things of the sons of Israel, and they shall not profane my holy name, which they are consecrating to me.” The latter (relative) clause applies to the “the holy things of the sons of Israel” (the first clause), not the Lord’s name (i.e., the immediately preceding clause). The clause order in the translation has been rearranged to indicate this.

NET Notes: Lev 22:3

¹ tn Heb “To your generations.”

² tn The Piel (v. 2) and Hiphil (v. 3) forms of the verb קָדַשׁ (qadash) appear to be interchangeable in this context. Both mean “to consecrate” (Heb “make holy [or “sacred”]”).

³ tn Heb “and his impurity [is] on him”; NIV “is ceremonially unclean”; NAB, NRSV “while he is in a state of uncleanness.”

⁴ sn Regarding the “cut off” penalty, see the note on Lev 7:20. Cf. the interpretive translation of TEV “he can never again serve at the altar.”

NET Notes: Lev 22:4

¹ tn Heb “Man man.” The reduplication is a way of saying “any man” (cf. Lev 15:2; 17:3, etc.), but with a negative command it means “No man” (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 147).

² sn The diseases and discharges mentioned here are those described in Lev 13-15.

³ tn Heb “And the one.”

⁴ tn Heb “in all unclean of a person/soul”; for the Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) meaning “a [dead] person,” see the note on Lev 19:28.

⁵ tn Heb “or a man who goes out from him a lying of seed.”

NET Notes: Lev 22:5

¹ tn Heb “which there shall be uncleanness to him.”

² tn The Hebrew term for “person” here is אָדָם (adam, “human being”), which could either a male or a female person.

³ tn Heb “to all his impurity.” The phrase refers to the impurity of the person whom the man touches to become unclean (see the previous clause). To clarify this, the translation uses “that person’s” rather than “his.”

NET Notes: Lev 22:6

¹ sn The phrase “any of these” refers back to the unclean things touched in vv. 4b-5.

NET Notes: Lev 22:8

¹ tn Heb “a carcass,” referring to the carcass of an animal that has died on its own, not the carcass of an animal slaughtered for sacrifice or killed by wild beasts. This has been clarified in the translation by supplying the phrase “of natural causes”; cf. NAB “that has died of itself”; TEV “that has died a natural death.”

NET Notes: Lev 22:9

¹ tn Heb “and they will not lift up on it sin.” The pronoun “it” (masculine) apparently refers to any item of food that belongs to the category of “holy offerings” (see above).

² tn Heb “and die in it.”

NET Notes: Lev 22:10

¹ tn Heb “No stranger” (so KJV, ASV), which refers here to anyone other than the Aaronic priests. Some English versions reverse the negation and state positively: NIV “No one outside a priest’s family”; NRSV “Only a member of a priestly family”; CEV “Only you priests and your families.”

² tn Heb “A resident [תּוֹשָׁב (toshav) from יָשַׁב (yashav, “to dwell, to reside”)] of a priest.” The meaning of the term is uncertain. It could refer to a “guest” (NIV) or perhaps “bound servant” (NRSV; see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 149). In the translation “lodger” was used instead of “boarder” precisely because a boarder would be provided meals with his lodging, the very issue at stake here.

NET Notes: Lev 22:11

¹ tn Heb “and a priest, if he buys a person, the property of his silver.”

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (the person whom the priest has purchased) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “eat it”; the referent (the holy offerings) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ tn Heb “his”; the referent (the priest) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn Heb “and the [slave] born of his house, they shall eat in his food.” The LXX, Syriac, Tg. Onq., Tg. Ps.-J., and some mss of Smr have plural “ones born,” which matches the following plural “they” pronoun and the plural form of the verb.