1. The Lord spoke to Moses:
2. “Tell Aaron and his sons that they must deal respectfully with the holy offerings of the Israelites, which they consecrate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name. I am the Lord.
3. Say to them, ‘Throughout your generations, if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings which the Israelites consecrate to the Lord while he is impure, that person must be cut off from before me. I am the Lord.
4. No man from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge may eat the holy offerings until he becomes clean. The one who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person, or a man who has a seminal emission,
5. or a man who touches a swarming thing by which he becomes unclean, or touches a person by which he becomes unclean, whatever that person’s impurity –
6. the person who touches any of these will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water.
7. When the sun goes down he will be clean, and afterward he may eat from the holy offerings, because they are his food.
8. He must not eat an animal that has died of natural causes or an animal torn by beasts and thus become unclean by it. I am the Lord.
9. They must keep my charge so that they do not incur sin on account of it and therefore die because they profane it. I am the Lord who sanctifies them.
10. “‘No lay person may eat anything holy. Neither a priest’s lodger nor a hired laborer may eat anything holy,