Leviticus 13:45

The Life of the Person with Skin Disease

13:45 “As for the diseased person who has the infection, ¹  his clothes must be torn, the hair of his head must be unbound, he must cover his mustache, ²  and he must call out ‘Unclean! Unclean!’

Leviticus 21:1-15

Rules for the Priests

21:1 The Lord said to Moses: “Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron – say to them, ‘For a dead person ³  no priest ⁴  is to defile himself among his people, ⁵  21:2 except for his close relative who is near to him: ⁶  his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, 21:3 and his virgin sister who is near to him, ⁷  who has no husband; he may defile himself for her. 21:4 He must not defile himself as a husband among his people so as to profane himself. ⁸  21:5 Priests ⁹  must not have a bald spot shaved on their head, they must not shave the corner of their beard, and they must not cut slashes in their body. ¹⁰ 

21:6 “‘They must be holy to their God, and they must not profane ¹¹  the name of their God, because they are the ones who present the Lord’s gifts, ¹²  the food of their God. Therefore they must be holy. ¹³  21:7 They must not take a wife defiled by prostitution, ¹⁴  nor are they to take a wife divorced from her husband, ¹⁵  for the priest ¹⁶  is holy to his God. ¹⁷  21:8 You must sanctify him because he presents the food of your God. He must be holy to you because I, the Lord who sanctifies you all, ¹⁸  am holy. 21:9 If a daughter of a priest profanes herself by engaging in prostitution, she is profaning her father. She must be burned to death. ¹⁹ 

Rules for the High Priest

21:10 “‘The high ²⁰  priest – who is greater than his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil is poured, who has been ordained ²¹  to wear the priestly garments – must neither dishevel the hair of his head nor tear his garments. ²²  21:11 He must not go where there is any dead person; ²³  he must not defile himself even for his father and his mother. 21:12 He must not go out from the sanctuary and must not profane ²⁴  the sanctuary of his God, because the dedication of the anointing oil of his God is on him. I am the Lord. 21:13 He must take a wife who is a virgin. ²⁵  21:14 He must not marry ²⁶  a widow, a divorced woman, or one profaned by prostitution; he may only take a virgin from his people ²⁷  as a wife. 21:15 He must not profane his children among his people, ²⁸  for I am the Lord who sanctifies him.’”

Exodus 33:5

33:5 For ²⁹  the Lord had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I went up among you for a moment, ³⁰  I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments, ³¹  that I may know ³²  what I should do to you.’” ³³ 

Numbers 5:18

5:18 Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, uncover the woman’s head, and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. ³⁴ 

Numbers 6:6-7

6:6 “‘All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he must not contact ³⁵  a dead body. ³⁶  6:7 He must not defile himself even ³⁷  for his father or his mother or his brother or his sister if they die, ³⁸  because the separation ³⁹  for ⁴⁰  his God is on his head.

Numbers 14:6

14:6 And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, two of those who had investigated the land, tore their garments.

Deuteronomy 33:9

33:9 He said to his father and mother, “I have not seen him,” ⁴¹ 

and he did not acknowledge his own brothers

or know his own children,

for they kept your word,

and guarded your covenant.

Jeremiah 7:29

7:29 So, mourn, ⁴²  you people of this nation. ⁴³  Cut off your hair and throw it away. Sing a song of mourning on the hilltops. For the Lord has decided to reject ⁴⁴  and forsake this generation that has provoked his wrath!’” ⁴⁵ 

Ezekiel 24:16-17

24:16 “Son of man, realize that I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you with a jolt, ⁴⁶  but you must not mourn or weep or shed tears. 24:17 Groan in silence for the dead, ⁴⁷  but do not perform mourning rites. ⁴⁸  Bind on your turban ⁴⁹  and put your sandals on your feet. Do not cover your lip ⁵⁰  and do not eat food brought by others.” ⁵¹ 

Micah 1:16

1:16 Shave your heads bald as you mourn for the children you love; ⁵² 

shave your foreheads as bald ⁵³  as an eagle, ⁵⁴ 

for they are taken from you into exile.

[13:45]  ¹ tn Heb “And the diseased one who in him is the infection.”

[13:45]  ² tn Heb “and his head shall be unbound, and he shall cover on [his] mustache.” Tearing one’s clothing, allowing the hair to hang loose rather than bound up in a turban, and covering the mustache on the upper lip are all ways of expressing shame, grief, or distress (cf., e.g., Lev 10:6 and Micah 3:7).

[21:1]  ³ tn The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul, person, life”) can sometimes refer to a “dead person” (cf. Lev 19:28 above and the literature cited there).

[21:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “no one,” but “priest” has been used in the translation to clarify that these restrictions are limited to the priests, not to the Israelites in general (note the introductory formula, “say to the priests, the sons of Aaron”).

[21:1]  ⁵ tc The MT has “in his peoples,” but Smr, LXX, Syriac, Targum, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “in his people,” referring to the Israelites as a whole.

[21:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “except for his flesh, the one near to him.”

[21:3]  ⁷ tn Cf. v. 2a.

[21:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “He shall not defile himself a husband in his peoples, to profane himself.” The meaning of the line is disputed, but it appears to prohibit a priest from burying any relative by marriage (as opposed to the blood relatives of vv. 2-3), including his wife (compare B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 142-43 with J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 343, 348).

[21:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “they”; the referent (priests, see the beginning of v. 1) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[21:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and in their body they shall not [cut] slash[es]” (cf. Lev 19:28). The context connects these sorts of mutilations with mourning rites (cf. Lev 19:27-28 above).

[21:6]  ¹¹ sn Regarding “profane,” see the note on Lev 10:10 above.

[21:6]  ¹² sn Regarding the Hebrew term for “gifts,” see the note on Lev 1:9 above (cf. also 3:11 and 16 in combination with the word for “food” that follows in the next phrase here).

[21:6]  ¹³ tc Smr and all early versions have the plural adjective “holy” rather than the MT singular noun “holiness.”

[21:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “A wife harlot and profaned they shall not take.” The structure of the verse (e.g., “wife” at the beginning of the two main clauses) suggests that “harlot and profaned” constitutes a hendiadys, meaning “a wife defiled by harlotry” (see the explanation in B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 143, as opposed to that in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 343, 348; cf. v. 14 below). Cf. NASB “a woman who is profaned by harlotry.”

[21:7]  ¹⁵ sn For a helpful discussion of divorce in general and as it relates to this passage see B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 143-44.

[21:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the priest) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[21:7]  ¹⁷ tn The pronoun “he” in this clause refers to the priest, not the former husband of the divorced woman.

[21:8]  ¹⁸ tn The three previous second person references in this verse are all singular, but this reference is plural. By adding “all” this grammatical distinction is preserved in the translation.

[21:9]  ¹⁹ tn See the note on “burned to death” in 20:14.

[21:10]  ²⁰ tn The adjective “high” has been supplied in the translation for clarity, as in many English versions.

[21:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “and he has filled his hand.” For this expression see the note on Lev 8:33.

[21:10]  ²² tn Regarding these signs of mourning see the note on Lev 10:6. His head had been anointed (v. 10a) so it must not be unkempt (v. 10b), and his garments were special priestly garments (v. 10a) so he must not tear them (v. 10b). In the translation “garments” has been employed rather than “clothes” to suggest that the special priestly garments are referred to here; cf. NRSV “nor tear his vestments.”

[21:11]  ²³ tc Although the MT has “persons” (plural), the LXX and Syriac have the singular “person” corresponding to the singular adjectival participle “dead” (cf. also Num 6:6).

[21:12]  ²⁴ sn Regarding “profane,” see the note on Lev 10:10 above.

[21:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “And he, a wife in her virginity he shall take.”

[21:14]  ²⁶ tn Heb “take.” In context this means “take as wife,” i.e., “marry.”

[21:14]  ²⁷ tc The MT has literally, “from his peoples,” but Smr, LXX, Syriac, Targum, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “from his people,” referring to the Israelites as a whole.

[21:15]  ²⁸ tc The MT has literally, “in his peoples,” but Smr, LXX, Syriac, Targum, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “in his people,” referring to the Israelites as a whole.

[33:5]  ²⁹ tn The verse simply begins “And Yahweh said.” But it is clearly meant to be explanatory for the preceding action of the people.

[33:5]  ³⁰ tn The construction is formed with a simple imperfect in the first half and a perfect tense with vav (ו) in the second half. Heb “[in] one moment I will go up in your midst and I will destroy you.” The verse is certainly not intended to say that God was about to destroy them. That, plus the fact that he has announced he will not go in their midst, leads most commentators to take this as a conditional clause: “If I were to do such and such, then….”

[33:5]  ³¹ tn The Hebrew text also has “from on you.”

[33:5]  ³² tn The form is the cohortative with a vav (ו) following the imperative; it therefore expresses the purpose or result: “strip off…that I may know.” The call to remove the ornaments must have been perceived as a call to show true repentance for what had happened. If they repented, then God would know how to deal with them.

[33:5]  ³³ tn This last clause begins with the interrogative “what,” but it is used here as an indirect interrogative. It introduces a noun clause, the object of the verb “know.”

[5:18]  ³⁴ tn The expression has been challenged. The first part, “bitter water,” has been thought to mean “water of contention” (so NEB), but this is not convincing. It has some support in the versions which read “contention” and “testing,” no doubt trying to fit the passage better. N. H. Snaith (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 129) suggests from an Arabic word that it was designed to cause an abortion – but that would raise an entirely different question, one of who the father of a child was. And that has not been introduced here. The water was “bitter” in view of the consequences it held for her if she was proven to be guilty. That is then enforced by the wordplay with the last word, the Piel participle הַמְאָרֲרִים (ham’ararim). The bitter water, if it convicted her, would pronounce a curse on her. So she was literally holding her life in her hands.

[6:6]  ³⁵ tn The Hebrew verb is simply “enter, go,” no doubt with the sense of go near.

[6:6]  ³⁶ tn The Hebrew has נֶפֶשׁ מֵת (nefesh met), literally a “dead person.” But since the word נֶפֶשׁ can also be used for animals, the restriction would be for any kind of corpse. Death was very much a part of the fallen world, and so for one so committed to the Lord, avoiding all such contamination would be a witness to the greatest separation, even in a family.

[6:7]  ³⁷ tn The vav (ו) conjunction at the beginning of the clause specifies the cases of corpses that are to be avoided, no matter how painful it might be.

[6:7]  ³⁸ tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffixed subjective genitive – “in the dying of them” – to form the adverbial clause of time.

[6:7]  ³⁹ tn The word “separation” here is metonymy of adjunct – what is on his head is long hair that goes with the vow.

[6:7]  ⁴⁰ tn The genitive could perhaps be interpreted as possession, i.e., “the vow of his God,” but it seems more likely that an objective genitive would be more to the point.

[33:9]  ⁴¹ sn This statement no doubt alludes to the Levites’ destruction of their own fellow tribesmen following the golden calf incident (Exod 32:25-29).

[7:29]  ⁴² tn The word “mourn” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation for clarity to explain the significance of the words “Cut your hair and throw it away.”

[7:29]  ⁴³ tn The words, “you people of this nation” are not in the text. Many English versions supply, “Jerusalem.” The address shifts from second masculine singular addressing Jeremiah (vv. 27-28a) to second feminine singular. It causes less disruption in the flow of the context to see the nation as a whole addressed here as a feminine singular entity (as, e.g., in 2:19, 23; 3:2, 3; 6:26) than to introduce a new entity, Jerusalem.

[7:29]  ⁴⁴ tn The verbs here are the Hebrew scheduling perfects. For this use of the perfect see GKC 312 §106.m.

[7:29]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “the generation of his wrath.”

[24:16]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “a strike.”

[24:17]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “Groan silently. As to the dead….” Cf. M. Greenberg’s suggestion that דֹּם מֵתִים (dom metim) be taken together and דֹּם be derived from ָדּמַם (damam, “to moan, murmur”). See M. Greenberg, Ezekiel (AB), 2:508.

[24:17]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “(For) the dead mourning you shall not conduct.” In the Hebrew text the word translated “dead” is plural, indicating that mourning rites are in view. Such rites would involve outward demonstrations of one’s sorrow, including wailing and weeping.

[24:17]  ⁴⁹ sn The turban would normally be removed for mourning (Josh 7:6; 1 Sam 4:12).

[24:17]  ⁵⁰ sn Mourning rites included covering the lower part of the face. See Lev 13:45.

[24:17]  ⁵¹ tn Heb “the bread of men.” The translation follows the suggestion accepted by M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 2:509) that this refers to a meal brought by comforters to the one mourning. Some repoint the consonantal text to read “the bread of despair” (see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 2:56), while others, with support from the Targum and Vulgate, emend the consonantal text to read “the bread of mourners” (see D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:784).

[1:16]  ⁵² tn Heb “over the sons of your delight.”

[1:16]  ⁵³ tn Heb “make wide your baldness.”

[1:16]  ⁵⁴ tn Or “a vulture” (cf. NIV, TEV); CEV “a buzzard.” The Hebrew term נֶשֶׁר (nesher) refers to the griffon vulture or eagle.