Of all those that move along the ground, these are unclean for you. Whoever touches them when they are dead will be unclean till evening. The summary of the ground-moving creature section restates the clean/unclean status of the listed creatures and introduces the until-evening impurity for touching their dead bodies. The same graduated impurity system that applies to the land animals applies to the ground-moving creatures: contact with their carcasses produces the until-evening impurity. The consistency of the system across different animal categories communicates the systematic character of the Levitical purity framework.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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