Leviticus 11:31

31 All these small animals are unclean for you. If any of you touch the dead body of such an animal, you will be defiled until evening.

Leviticus 11:31 Meaning and Commentary

Leviticus 11:31

These are unclean to you of all that creep
Unfit for food, and not to be touched, at least when dead, as in the next clause, that is, these eight sorts of creeping things before mentioned, as the Targum of Jonathan expresses it, and these only, as Maimonides says {r}:

whosoever doth touch them when they are dead shall be unclean until
the even;
for touching them while alive did not defile, only when dead; and this the Jews interpret, while they are in the case in which they died, that is, while they are moist; for, as Ben Gersom says, if they are so dry, as that they cannot return to their moisture, they do not defile; for which reason, neither the bones, nor nails, nor nerves, nor skin of these creeping things, defile; but, they say ^F19, while the back bone is whole, and the bones cleave to it, then a creeping thing is reckoned moist, and while it is so it defiles.

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FOOTNOTES:

F18 Hilchot, Abot Hatumaot, c. 4. sect. 14.
F19 Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Niddah, c. 7. sect. 1.

Leviticus 11:31 In-Context

29 “Of the small animals that scurry along the ground, these are unclean for you: the mole rat, the rat, large lizards of all kinds,

30 the gecko, the monitor lizard, the common lizard, the sand lizard, and the chameleon.

31 All these small animals are unclean for you. If any of you touch the dead body of such an animal, you will be defiled until evening.

32 If such an animal dies and falls on something, that object will be unclean. This is true whether the object is made of wood, cloth, leather, or burlap. Whatever its use, you must dip it in water, and it will remain defiled until evening. After that, it will be ceremonially clean and may be used again.

33 “If such an animal falls into a clay pot, everything in the pot will be defiled, and the pot must be smashed.