“Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.”
The land that you are entering to take possession of is a land unclean with the filthiness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to the other." The prayer quotes or paraphrases a prophetic warning about maintaining purity boundaries in the land of Canaan, applying the ancient requirement to the post-exilic context. The language of uncleanness and abomination reflects cultic categories and suggests that the peoples of the land are understood as cultically incompatible with the covenant community. This verse demonstrates the post-exilic application of biblical purity laws to the challenge of maintaining Jewish distinctiveness in a pluralistic religious context.
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