uncleanness: a state of impurity, ritual or moral, that keeps a person or object away from what is holy and must be cleansed.
This word names a condition, not an action. It is the state of being unclean, and in the law of Moses it is mostly a matter of standing before God rather than of guilt. Ordinary events of life could put a person into it: a bodily discharge, childbirth, a skin disease, touching a dead body, or eating a forbidden animal. Being in this state was not usually a sin. It simply meant a person could not come near the sanctuary or handle holy things until set washings and offerings had removed it, so the whole idea points forward to cleansing and a return to normal life.
The same word also reaches past the ritual system into the life of sin. The prophets, Ezra, and the book of Lamentations use it for a deeper stain: idolatry, injustice, bloodshed, and sexual wrongdoing that pollute a people and shut them out from God. The bridge between the two uses is a single idea, that something has made a person or a nation unfit to stand in God's presence and needs to be washed away. Ezekiel moves easily between the two, comparing the nation's conduct to the impurity of a woman's monthly period and then promising that God will cleanse his people from all their uncleannesses.
Whichever sense is in view, cleansing is the point. The state is meant to be temporary and dealt with, so that access to God is restored.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the word's ritual and moral uses belong to one continuous idea of impurity or to two distinct kinds of impurity that follow different rules.
- contestedOne continuous concept: the ritual state and the moral stain are the same basic idea of pollution, with the ethical use a natural extension of the cultic one. This is how the standard lexicons present the word, listing both ranges under a single entry.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. טֻמְאָה; G. André, "טָמֵא ṭāmēʾ," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. 5
- contestedTwo distinct systems: a ritual impurity that is normal, temporary, and not sinful, and a moral impurity generated by grave sin that defiles the land and the sanctuary; they are related but governed by different rules.; Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (2000)