And that ye may put difference between holy and
unholy,
&c.] That being sober they might be able to distinguish
between the one and the other; which a drunken man, having his
mind and senses disturbed, is not capable of; as between holy and
unholy persons, and between holy and unholy things; particularly,
as Aben Ezra interprets it, between a sacred place and one that
is common, and between a holy day and a common week day; the
knowledge and memory of which may be lost through intemperance;
and so that may be done in a place and on a day which ought not
to be done, or that omitted on a day and in a place which ought
to be done:
and between unclean and clean;
between unclean men and women, beasts and fowls, and clean ones;
and between unclean things in a ceremonial sense, and those that
are clean, which a man in liquor may be no judge of: hence, as
the above writer observes, after this section follow laws
concerning fowls clean and unclean, the purification of a woman
after childbirth, the leprosy in men, garments and houses, and
concerning profluvious and menstruous persons; all which the
priests were to be judges of, and therefore ought to be sober.