Imamat 11:44

11:44 for I am the Lord your God and you are to sanctify yourselves and be holy because I am holy. You must not defile yourselves by any of the swarming things that creep on the ground,

Imamat 21:1

Rules for the Priests

21:1 The Lord said to Moses: “Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron – say to them, ‘For a dead person ¹  no priest ²  is to defile himself among his people, ³ 

Imamat 22:6

22:6 the person who touches any of these ⁴  will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water.

[21:1]  ¹ tn The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul, person, life”) can sometimes refer to a “dead person” (cf. Lev 19:28 above and the literature cited there).

[21:1]  ² tn Heb “no one,” but “priest” has been used in the translation to clarify that these restrictions are limited to the priests, not to the Israelites in general (note the introductory formula, “say to the priests, the sons of Aaron”).

[21:1]  ³ tc The MT has “in his peoples,” but Smr, LXX, Syriac, Targum, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “in his people,” referring to the Israelites as a whole.

[22:6]  ⁴ sn The phrase “any of these” refers back to the unclean things touched in vv. 4b-5.