Ulangan 22:9

Illustrations of the Principle of Purity

22:9 You must not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed; otherwise the entire yield, both of the seed you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled. ¹ 

Ulangan 11:10

11:10 For the land where you are headed ²  is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand ³  like a vegetable garden.

Ulangan 21:4

21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ⁴  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ⁵  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

Ulangan 29:23

29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ⁶ 

[22:9]  ¹ tn Heb “set apart.” The verb קָדַשׁ (qadash) in the Qal verbal stem (as here) has the idea of being holy or being treated with special care. Some take the meaning as “be off-limits, forfeited,” i.e., the total produce of the vineyard, both crops and grapes, have to be forfeited to the sanctuary (cf. Exod 29:37; 30:29; Lev 6:18, 27; Num 16:37-38; Hag 2:12).

[11:10]  ² tn Heb “you are going there to possess it”; NASB “into which you are about to cross to possess it”; NRSV “that you are crossing over to occupy.”

[11:10]  ³ tn Heb “with your foot” (so NASB, NLT). There is a two-fold significance to this phrase. First, Egypt had no rain so water supply depended on human efforts at irrigation. Second, the Nile was the source of irrigation waters but those waters sometimes had to be pumped into fields and gardens by foot-power, perhaps the kind of machinery (Arabic shaduf) still used by Egyptian farmers (see C. Aldred, The Egyptians, 181). Nevertheless, the translation uses “by hand,” since that expression is the more common English idiom for an activity performed by manual labor.

[21:4]  ⁴ tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

[21:4]  ⁵ sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.

[29:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.