Leviticus 21:11

11. Neither… go in to any dead body Literally, dead soul. The Hebrew nephesh is here used in the sense of the common expression, “dead person,” without meaning to say that the personality lies in the body. Rhetoricians call this metonymy. Delitzsch, in his Biblical Psychology, suggests that the corpse is called nephesh because it bears the fresh traces of the soul imprinted upon it in parting. Since the destruction of the temple the Jews have ceased, generally, to consider themselves as polluted by being in the presence of a dead body, but the touch is still polluting. “Modern times have afforded instances where persons, in their misguided affection, have pressed the cold lips of the dead, and taken thence disease which has laid them in the grave; and it is well known that the slightest wound inflicted by a dissecting instrument almost inevitably produces death. Against such sad consequences the Mosaic law most carefully guarded the Israelites. Contrary to the usages of the eastern world, where the dead were sometimes embalmed and preserved, or where the living and the dead were consumed together in the flames, the Jews were taught that death was a curse, that its presence was defiling, that the living were to be carefully separated from the dead, and that any person who touched a dead body thereby became unclean, and was not allowed to touch any other person or thing until he had passed a period of separation and had been thoroughly bathed. Modern science cannot fail to recognise the utility of such restrictions; and many precious lives might have been saved by paying attention to the sanitary instructions which are embodied in the Mosaic law.” H.L. Hastings. The high priest must never knowingly contract ceremonial pollution. He would be rendered unclean by entering a house where there was a corpse. See Leviticus 21:1, note. “He who indeed reflects the whole fulness of a holy life must be freed from all polluting fellowship with death, and not even come in contact with the corpses of his parents; his priestly rule in the sanctuary may not be interrupted by any consideration whatever of natural bonds, otherwise regarded as most holy.” Oehler. But Jesus, the “undefiled” High Priest of our race, touched the dead and was not defiled, because he was the Prince of Life. He was like the element of fire, which purifies other things without itself contracting impurity.