Translations
KJVPrimary
King James VersionThen said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.
F.O.G.Secondary
The F.O.GThen Chaggai said, "If one defiled by a corpse — defiled in his nephesh — touches any of these, does it become unclean?" The priests answered and said, "It becomes unclean."
F.O.G.M.
F.O.G MessageThen Haggai said, "If someone ceremonially unclean through contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?" The priests answered, "Yes — it becomes unclean."
BSB
Berean Standard BibleSo 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.
Footnotes
Tame-nephesh — 'unclean of nephesh' — is the technical designation for corpse-defilement under Num 19:11-22. Nephesh here carries its concrete sense of a living or dead person/body (cf. Num 6:6: nephesh met, 'a dead body'), not 'soul' in the abstract. Corpse-defilement was the most severe and contagious impurity in the Levitical system — it spread even through shared airspace within an enclosure (Num 19:14). The F.O.G. retains 'nephesh' to preserve this technical-cultural weight. The asymmetry across vv.12-13 is the rhetorical hinge: impurity spreads outward; holiness does not.
