UNCLEANNESS (טָמֵא֒, H3237, טֻמְאָה, H3240, LXX, NT ἀκάθαρτος, ἀκαθαρσία, to be unclean, unclean, uncleanness). In addition, Heb. uses various analagous terms. Since the background is always religious, NT uses κοινόω, G3124, to make common, with the force of destroying holiness, and so making or counting as unclean.
1. The meaning of the concept. Persons, foods, places, and objects could all be unclean. The uncleanness could be inherent or acquired by contamination. “In the minds of the ancients there was a close connection between the notion of purity or cleanness and the notion of being consecrated to God. There was a mysterious and frightening force inherent in things which were impure and in things which were sacred, and these two forces acted on everything with which they came into contact, placing the objects or persons which touched them under a kind of interdict. Both what was impure and what was consecrated were alike ‘untouchable’” (R. de Vaux). We are dealing with concepts going back into man’s infancy, which have been modified in the OT, where there is a wide area between the holy and the impure. In the NT this has been changed. Not that which goes into a man but what comes out of him is what defiles him (Mark 7:18-20). Similarly, nothing God has made is essentially unclean (Acts 10:13-15; 1 Tim 4:4, 5).
2. Things that make unclean.
(a) Animals are either clean or unclean, the uncleanness being imparted by eating them or touching their dead bodies (Lev 11; Deut 14:3-20). Whatever motivations may be offered by readers for the distinction, for the Bible it lies essentially in God’s decree.
(b) All bodies which died of natural causes imparted impurity, whether the body was of a man (Num 19:11), of an impure animal (Lev 11:4-8, 24-28), or of a pure animal (11:39, 40). The killing of a pure animal for food did not render it impure, and on analogy, presumably, a man taking part in a holy war for the God of Israel would not be rendered impure by those he killed. The reason behind this is that death, the outcome of human sin, is by its very nature a negation of God’s holiness.
(c) All forbidden sexual unions rendered those partaking impure (Lev 18). Any such sexual perversions (cf. Rom 1:26, 27), are a rebellion against the God-created order of nature and therefore a stepping out of the sphere of holiness.
(d) Virtually everything linked with sex could impart uncleanness. Passages like Exodus 19:15 and 1 Samuel 21:5 show that sexual relationships were considered incompatible with divine worship. The sexual act was seen as communicating uncleanness (Lev 15:16-18), though Jewish tradition, based on v. 31, makes it refer merely to those coming into contact with anything belonging to the sanctuary. Menstruation (15:19-24), childbirth (12:1-5) and various discharges from the sexual organs (15:1-12, 25-27) created uncleanness.
(e) “Leprosy” (Lev 13), which NEB renders “a malignant skin disease,” for it is not Hansen’s disease or true leprosy, made seriously unclean. Clearly, esp. if taken with the teaching of Haggai 2:11-14, it shows that uncleanness is always stronger than holiness, and illustrates a divine command intended to impress on people how serious impurity is. No man can escape it.
3. Cleansing from uncleanness. The simpler forms of uncleanness were dealt with by washing, e.g. for simpler sexual impurities (Lev 15:5-12, 16-18, 21-24, 27), for that created by an animal carcass (11:24-28, 39, 40). The one who touched a human corpse, however, had to take advantage of the sacrifice of the red heifer (Num 19:11-19). For the cured leper, for the mother after childbirth, and for certain sexual discharges a sacrifice had to be brought (Lev 12:6-8; 14:1-20; 15:13-15, 29, 30). The ritual of the Day of Atonement was intended to cleanse the defilement the sanctuary might have contracted, and by the intertestamental period extending to all the unintentional impurities of the people. Deliberately contracted uncleanness or the refusal to seek cleansing (Num 19:20-22) brought “cutting off” from the people. In essence there was virtually no difference between uncleanness and sin considered as an unintentional falling short. A connection may be seen in what one may call “ritual impurity” contracted by the man who burnt the carcasses of the sin offerings on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:28), and those involved in the burning of the red heifer and the collecting of its ashes (Num 19:8, 10).
4. The spiritualizing of the concept. In the prophets there is a deepening of the concept. It is expressed esp. in Isaiah’s cry, “I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa 6:5), and his confession, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds like a polluted garment” (64:6). Similarly in his picture of God’s restoration in 35:8, “The unclean shall not pass over it,” has obviously a moral rather than a ritual implication. Unfortunately in the postexilic period ever increasing stress came to be laid on the avoidance of formal uncleanness. It was an obsession both with the Qumran Covenanters and the Pharisees. In the later Talmudic developments questions of purity and impurity provide some of the most complex sections of rabbinic legislation. In the Church, however, Christ’s teaching was continued. The decisions of the apostolic gathering in Jerusalem were based on regard for those Jews who were law-bound (Acts 15:19-21). Romans 14:14 is Paul’s expression of the fact that uncleanness is something essentially spiritual in its nature (cf. Heb. 12:15). The ritual of washing has become purely pictorial, and water becomes a symbol of the word (Eph 5:26). See Clean.
Bibliography J. Pedersen, Israel III-IV (1940); R. de Vaux. Ancient Israel (1958-1960, Eng. tr. 1961).