Leviticus 22:3. Goeth unto the holy things To eat them, or to touch them; for if the touch of one of the people having his uncleanness upon him defiled the thing he touched, much more was it so in the priest. Cut off From my ordinances by excommunication: he shall be excluded both from the administration and from the participation of them. Le Clerc takes it for cutting off by death. read more
Rules concerning priests (21:1-22:16)Priests carried a heavy responsibility in acting on the people’s behalf in offering their sacrifices, and therefore they had to guard against ceremonial uncleanness. They were to have nothing to do with the burial of the dead, except in the case of close relatives, and were not to make public show of their sorrow by disfiguring themselves. They and their families were to be blameless in all things moral (21:1-9).Rules for the high priest were even stricter... read more
soul. Hebrew. nephesh. App-13 . Here rendered "soul", but in Leviticus 21:11 inaccurately rendered "body". See note on Leviticus 19:28 . cut off from My presence. Occurs only here in the Pentateuch; elsewhere, "cut off from his people". See note on Leviticus 7:20 . Accounted for here by the seriousness of the offence. read more
the dead. Hebrew. nephesh ( App-13 ), rendered "soul" in preceding verse. Heb = "a dead soul". Compare Leviticus 22:11 . seed goeth. See Leviticus 15:16 . read more
Leviticus 22:3.— Houbigant renders this verse better, when he is unclean. The meaning of the phrase, he shall be cut off from my presence, is given us in the 9th verse; he shall die. read more
Leviticus 22:4. What man soever of the seed of Aaron is a leper— These defilements, spoken of at large in the 15th chapter, were to seclude the priests from all public offices, in the same manner as they secluded common Israelites from the general intercourse of life. The words, whoso toucheth any thing that is unclean by the dead, are rendered by Houbigant, whoever shall touch any uncleanness of a funeral: they might more literally be rendered, whoso toucheth any unclean thing of the dead; and... read more
3. Whosoever he be . . . that goeth unto the holy things—The multitude of minute restrictions to which the priests, from accidental defilement, were subjected, by keeping them constantly on their guard lest they should be unfit for the sacred service, tended to preserve in full exercise the feeling of awe and submission to the authority of God. The ideas of sin and duty were awakened in their breasts by every case to which either an interdict or an injunction was applied. But why enact an... read more
4-6. wash his flesh with water—Any Israelite who had contracted a defilement of such a nature as debarred him from the enjoyment of his wonted privileges, and had been legally cleansed from the disqualifying impurity, was bound to indicate his state of recovery by the immersion of his whole person in water. Although all ceremonial impurity formed a ground of exclusion, there were degrees of impurity which entailed a longer or shorter period of excommunication, and for the removal of which... read more
Things that profane a priest 22:1-9A selection of seven laws appears between a brief introduction (Leviticus 22:1-2) and a conclusion (Leviticus 22:9). The priests could, of course, become defiled like any other Israelites, but no priest who had become ceremonially unclean was to touch or eat the holy things (the tabernacle furniture, sacrifices, etc.). read more
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Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Leviticus 22:4
See Leviticus 15:13-16. read more