Leviticus 11:25
And if it be necessary that he carry any of these things when they are dead, he shall wash his clothes, and shall be unclean until the sun set.
Open Leviticus 11:25 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et si necesse fuerit ut portet quippiam horum mortuum, lavabit vestimenta sua, et immundus erit usque ad occasum solis.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ πᾶς ὁ αἴρων τῶν θνησιμαίων αὐτῶν πλυνεῖ τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ ἀκάθαρτος ἔσται ἕως ἑσπέρας.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְכָל הַנֹּשֵׂ֖א מִנִּבְלָתָ֑ם יְכַבֵּ֥ס בְּגָדָ֖יו וְטָמֵ֥א עַד הָעָֽרֶב
Haydock's commentary
Necessary. To prevent the obstruction of the road, or the infection of the air. (Menochius)
When any person touched these carcasses, he was obliged to wash his clothes immediately, and still to refrain from touching any thing sacred till sun-set. (Estius)
If a dog chanced to die in the house of an Egyptian, all the family shaved their hair and began to mourn. The food and wine in the house could no longer be used. (Eusebius, præp. ii. 1.) They adored the dog. But other nations, which did not adore animals, esteemed those unworthy of sacred things who had touched a carcass, though they invoked their gods by slaying beasts, as Porphyrius remarks. (Eusebius, præp. v. 10.) They put off their shoes when they enter certain temples, for the same reason. Scortea non ulli fas est inferre sacello
ne violent puros exanimata Deos.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Matthew XV. 1
And one may remark, that because of this the lawgiver allows just so much time, as it may be remaining within one, but when it is gone forth, no longer. For instance, at evening He bids you wash yourself, and so be clean; measuring the time of the digestion, and of the excretion. But the things of the heart, He saith, abide within, and when they are gone forth they defile, and not when abiding only. And first He puts our evil thoughts, a kind of thing which belonged to the Jews; and not as yet doth He make His refutation from the nature of the things, but from the manner of production from the belly and the heart respectively, and from the fact that the one sort remains, the other not; the one entering in from without, and departing again outwards, while the others are bredwithin, and having gone forth they defile, and then more so, when they are gone forth. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).