Foul in a religious sense
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H2931, ṭāmēʾ, is a Hebrew adjective for what is unclean or defiled within a defined covenantal relation. It describes animals not permitted as food, objects affected by contact, people in temporary bodily or corpse-related states, skin-disease status, land associated with exile, lips confessed as unclean, and moral or cultic defilement denounced by prophets.
Reader summary
Full entry for טָמֵא (H2931) · Open the biblical lexicon
H2931, ṭāmēʾ, is a Hebrew adjective for what is unclean or defiled within a defined covenantal relation. It describes animals not permitted as food, objects affected by contact, people in temporary bodily or corpse-related states, skin-disease status, land associated with exile, lips confessed as unclean, and moral or cultic defilement denounced by prophets.
The BSB source-word alignment has 88 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include is unclean (20), unclean (17), are unclean (8), an unclean (4), and the unclean (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Leviticus 5:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Leviticus (47), Numbers (11), Deuteronomy (8), Isaiah (6).
H2931, ṭāmēʾ, is a Hebrew adjective for what is unclean or defiled within a defined covenantal relation. It describes animals not permitted as food, objects affected by contact, people in temporary bodily or corpse-related states, skin-disease status, land associated with exile, lips confessed as unclean, and moral or cultic defilement denounced by prophets. The same English word unclean can therefore name ritual ineligibility, prohibited food, contaminated holy space, or moral pollution. Context must decide which domain is present.
Torah's ritual categories protect Israel's worship and teach distinctions around holy space, food, bodies, death, and communal access. Many unclean states arise without a person's deliberate sin and can change through time, washing, examination, or prescribed restoration. Leviticus 5 gives responsibility after unknowing contact becomes known, but the adjective itself is not a character verdict. Skin-disease and bodily-discharge instructions can involve painful separation; they must be studied historically and cannot be copied into modern congregational exclusion, disability stigma, or public-health claims.
Prophets use the vocabulary more directly for corrupted worship, violence, idolatry, speech, and covenant betrayal. Isaiah confesses unclean lips in the presence of the Holy One; Ezekiel condemns priests who erase the clean/unclean distinction; Haggai uses priestly instruction to expose a people's defiled work. That moral extension does not make every ritual state sinful. Pastoral use should name restoration, refuse to call persons dirty, avoid anti-Jewish caricature, and distinguish medical conditions, ordinary bodily processes, ritual status, and moral wrongdoing with disciplined care.
H2931 spans contact impurity, food classification, skin-disease status, corpse and bodily states, holy-space boundaries, prophetic confession, land and exile imagery, priestly failure, and moral defilement.
Or if a person touches anything unclean—whether the carcass of any unclean wild animal or livestock or crawling creature—even if he is unaware of it, he is unclean and guilty.
Contact can create an unclean status before the person is aware. The passage requires response when the matter becomes known, but it does not make the animal or affected person morally contemptible.
You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean,
Priestly discernment includes teaching distinctions rather than inventing shame. The categories organize approach to holy things and cannot be flattened into saved and condemned people.
But of those that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, you are not to eat the following: The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you.
Unclean describes an animal prohibited as food for Israel under the chapter's criteria. It is a dietary classification, not a claim that the creature is evil or useless.
A diseased person must wear torn clothes and let his hair hang loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’
The skin-disease instruction makes status publicly audible and socially costly. Readers should acknowledge that burden without identifying the condition as Hansen's disease or turning the rule into modern stigma.
“Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone with a skin disease, anyone who has a bodily discharge, and anyone who is defiled by a dead body.
Temporary removal protects the camp's sanctuary order within Israel's wilderness arrangement. It does not authorize churches to expel sick, disabled, menstruating, grieving, or dying people.
As well as the pig; though it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. It is unclean for you. You must not eat its meat or touch its carcass.
The food boundary forms Israel's covenant practice. Christian canonical reflection must preserve the text's Jewish setting and avoid jokes, disgust, or claims of ethnic superiority.
Now please be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, and not to eat anything unclean.
The angel's instruction places Manoah's wife inside the Nazirite-related preparation surrounding Samson's birth. Her careful practice is vocation-specific, not evidence that pregnancy itself is morally dirty.
Then I said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”
In the throne-room vision, Isaiah confesses speech and communal sin before divine holiness. The coal and divine word provide cleansing and commission rather than permanent disgrace.
Awake, awake, clothe yourself with strength, O Zion! Put on your garments of splendor, O Jerusalem, holy city! For the uncircumcised and unclean will no longer enter you.
Restored Zion is pictured free from defiling domination. The prophetic image must not become hostility toward ethnic outsiders or a purity test for modern cities.
Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.
Ezekiel condemns leaders who abandon entrusted distinctions and profane God among the people. The accusation targets corrupt priestly practice, not vulnerable people carrying temporary status.
Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be divided by a measuring line, and you yourself will die on pagan soil. And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their homeland.’”
The adjective describes foreign soil within a judgment oracle of exile. The verse announces devastating covenant loss and must not be used to demean contemporary nations or the prophet's threatened family.
So Haggai asked, “If one who is defiled by contact with a corpse touches any of these, does it become defiled?” “Yes, it becomes defiled,” the priests answered.
Haggai draws on priestly contact logic before applying it to the people's work and worship. The analogy exposes covenant failure but does not make grief or contact with death a moral offense in itself.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Religious impurity that renders one unfit for worship, temple access, or covenant participation until purification
Religious impurity that renders one unfit for worship, temple access, or covenant participation until purification
foul in a religious sense BDB: unclean Usage: defiled, infamous, polluted(-tion), unclean.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 88 lexical occurrence verses.
טָמֵא is built from this root:
Exile involves cultic defilement.Hosea 9:1-6
Greek words that correspond to or develop the meaning of this Hebrew word in the New Testament.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H2931 orders access and restoration rather than supplying a label for inferior people. Torah applies it to food, objects, bodily states, corpse contact, skin-disease examination, and the camp's sanctuary relation. Some states are incurred unknowingly and many are temporary, which makes moral shaming a category error. Prophets later use the same vocabulary to expose polluted worship, violent leadership, corrupt speech, and exile, but their moral metaphors depend on the earlier ritual world rather than erasing it.
Faithful Christian teaching honors Israel's covenant categories, acknowledges the social burden carried by excluded people, refuses to call illness or ordinary bodies dirty, and follows the text toward cleansing, restored access, accountable leadership, and holy worship.
Lev.10.10
Across its inflectional evidence, H2931 appears with both grammatical genders and with singular as well as plural number. This companion represents the headword as ṭāmēʾ. The adjective can modify animals, food, objects, persons, lips, soil, or an unstated condition supplied by context. English unclean, defiled, and pagan reflect different applications, while the lexeme itself does not specify medical contagion, moral blame, permanence, or social value.
Jesus enters Israel's purity world, touches and restores people, challenges traditions that obscure heart-level defilement, and remains faithful to Israel's God. Acts and the letters address food, Gentile inclusion, conscience, and cleansing through Christ. These developments prohibit calling persons common or unclean while requiring careful canonical explanation rather than contempt for Torah or Judaism.