What Does Leviticus 11:43 Mean?
Do not make your living souls recoil through any swarming thing that swarms. Do not make yourselves unclean through them, and do not be stained by them.
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
Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one root for “unclean” and “defiled,” while calling the creature a “swarm that swarms”: the verse ties the living self to what it encounters.
THE MEANING
The verse locates the boundary in the living self: relation to the swarming creatures named here makes the self unclean and defiled. The Hebrew repeats one impurity root in both clauses, pressing the consequence rather than naming two unrelated conditions. The self is not untouched by what it joins.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the self remains unchanged by what it joins: the verse says it can be made detestable, unclean, and defiled through that relation.
THE ROOT
תִּטַּמְּאוּ
titamme'u
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
Be or become unclean; be defiled.
“stained” in this verse is titamme'u. English uses “unclean” and “defiled,” but both Hebrew verbs repeat the root טמא. That echo carries the warning forward as one unfolding condition rather than two separate labels.
ALSO GROWS
ṭamēʾ: Unclean.
טָמֵא
This form names the state the repeated verbs describe.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness, impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun gives the same root a name for the condition itself.
הַשֶּׁרֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵץ
ha-sherets ha-shoretz
GROWS FROM
שרץ
Swarm, teem, multiply.
“swarming thing” in this verse is ha-sherets ha-shoretz. The KJV phrase translates a noun and a participle from the same root: literally, a “swarm that swarms.” The Hebrew repetition describes teeming life in motion, beyond the English picture of a single creature crawling.
ALSO GROWS
sherets: A swarm or swarming creature.
שֶׁרֶץ
This noun names the creature at the center of the verse’s boundary.
shoretz: Swarming, that swarms.
שֹׁרֵץ
This participle repeats the noun’s root and makes the creature’s teeming action explicit.
תְּשַׁקְּצוּ
teshaqqetsu
GROWS FROM
שׁקץ
Abhor or regard as detestable; make detestable.
“make your living souls recoil” in this verse is teshaqqetsu. The clause says תְּשַׁקְּצוּ אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם (teshaqqetsu et-nafshotekhem): make your נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם (nafshotekhem, living selves) detestable. The root connects that condition of the self with the detestable thing named by its noun branches.
ALSO GROWS
sheqets: A detestable thing.
שֶׁקֶץ
This noun names the category of thing that shares the root of the verb applied to the self.
shiqquts: An abomination, a detestable thing.
שִׁקּוּץ
This related noun keeps the root’s sense of abhorrence visible across another form.
THE PATTERN
The Hebrew root for swarming names both teeming life in creation and the creatures whose relation to the self carries a boundary.
And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarming living soul, and let birds fly over the earth, upon the face of the expanse of the heavens."This sea, great and wide-armed; there are creeping things without number, beasts small and great.Yet whatever has no fins and scales in the seas and the rivers, all that swarms in the waters and every living soul in the waters, these are a recoil to you.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarming living soul, and let birds fly over the earth, upon the face of the expanse of the heavens."Genesis and Leviticus share the root שרץ (sharats, swarm or teem): Genesis names the waters’ swarming creatures, and Leviticus calls them the “swarm that swarms.” Genesis also describes them as נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah, living soul), showing that the creatures at this boundary still belong to teeming life.
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