What Does Leviticus 10:10 Mean?
And that you may divide between the set-apart and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;THE KEY
The verse names two different divides, set apart or common, clean or unclean, so holiness and purity are not the same thing.
THE MEANING
The verse places two distinctions before you: what is set apart and what is common, and what is unclean and what is clean. Something ordinary is not automatically unclean; each distinction names a different condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that whatever is not set apart is therefore unclean; the verse names common and unclean as separate categories.
THE ROOT
לְהַבְדִּיל
lehavdil
GROWS FROM
ב-ד-ל
b-d-l
Separate, distinguish, make a division.
“divide” in this verse is lehavdil. The wording is active: distinction is made by separating categories so each remains visible. The same root describes God dividing light from darkness, making distinction an ordering act.
ALSO GROWS
havdalah: Separation, distinction
הַבְדָּלָה
This noun names the boundary-making at the heart of “put difference.”
mavdil: One who separates or distinguishes
מַבְדִּיל
It shows distinction as an active role, not merely a label attached to things.
קֹדֶשׁ
qodesh
GROWS FROM
ק-ד-ש
q-d-sh
Set apart; consecrate.
“set-apart” in this verse is qodesh. The verse pairs קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh, set-apartness) with חֹל (chol, commonness), naming the contrast as set apart versus ordinary. It then sets that pair beside clean and unclean, so “holy” does not collapse into “clean.”
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; holy
קָדוֹשׁ
It describes the quality named by qodesh and keeps the focus on being set apart.
miqdash: Sanctuary; set-apart place
מִקְדָּשׁ
It shows the same root applied to a place marked as set apart.
טָמֵא
tame
GROWS FROM
ט-מ-א
t-m-ʾ
Be or become unclean.
The verse sets טָמֵא (tame, unclean) beside טָהוֹר (tahor, clean), not beside common. Impurity is its own state, separate from whether something is set apart.
ALSO GROWS
tumah: Uncleanness; impurity
טֻמְאָה
It names the state described by the word unclean.
time: Make unclean; defile
טִמֵּא
It shows the root can describe a change into the state of uncleanness.
THE PATTERN
Distinction makes different states legible without collapsing them into one another.
And God saw the light, that it was good, and God parted the light from the darkness.You shall therefore separate between clean animals and unclean, and between unclean winged things and clean. You shall not make your living souls recoil by animal, or by winged thing, or by any crawling thing upon the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.But firm food is for the complete, for those who through practice have their senses exercised to sift good from evil.THE THREAD
You shall therefore separate between clean animals and unclean, and between unclean winged things and clean. You shall not make your living souls recoil by animal, or by winged thing, or by any crawling thing upon the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.“Put difference” comes from the same Hebrew root in both verses. Here that distinction marks clean and unclean; in Leviticus 10:10, it also marks set apart and common, revealing two separate distinctions.
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