Leviticus 11:31

31 these [are] the unclean to you among all which are teeming; any one who is coming against them in their death is unclean till the evening.

Leviticus 11:31 Meaning and Commentary

Leviticus 11:31

These are unclean to you of all that creep
Unfit for food, and not to be touched, at least when dead, as in the next clause, that is, these eight sorts of creeping things before mentioned, as the Targum of Jonathan expresses it, and these only, as Maimonides says {r}:

whosoever doth touch them when they are dead shall be unclean until
the even;
for touching them while alive did not defile, only when dead; and this the Jews interpret, while they are in the case in which they died, that is, while they are moist; for, as Ben Gersom says, if they are so dry, as that they cannot return to their moisture, they do not defile; for which reason, neither the bones, nor nails, nor nerves, nor skin of these creeping things, defile; but, they say ^F19, while the back bone is whole, and the bones cleave to it, then a creeping thing is reckoned moist, and while it is so it defiles.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F18 Hilchot, Abot Hatumaot, c. 4. sect. 14.
F19 Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Niddah, c. 7. sect. 1.

Leviticus 11:31 In-Context

29 `And this [is] to you the unclean among the teeming things which are teeming on the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after its kind,

30 and the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole;

31 these [are] the unclean to you among all which are teeming; any one who is coming against them in their death is unclean till the evening.

32 `And anything on which any one of them falleth, in their death, is unclean, of any vessel of wood or garment or skin or sack, any vessel in which work is done is brought into water, and hath been unclean till the evening, then it hath been clean;

33 and any earthen vessel, into the midst of which [any] one of them falleth, all that [is] in its midst is unclean, and it ye do break.