snakes. The rendering “snail” (Sam. Rashi, etc.) is not so probable, as this is called שׁבלוּל in Psa 58:9; although the purple snail and all the marine species are eaten in Egypt and Palestine. Lastly, תּנשׁמת, the self-inflating animal (see at Lev 11:18), is no doubt the chameleon, which frequently inflates its belly, for example, when enraged, and remains in this state for several hours, when it gradually empties itself and becomes quite thin again. Its flesh was either cooked, or dried and reduced to powder, and used as a specific for corpulence, or a cure for fevers, or as a general medicine for sick children (Plin. h. n. 28, 29). The flesh of many of the lizards is also eaten by the Arabs (Leyrer, pp. 603, 604).
Verse 31
The words, “these are unclean to you among all swarming creatures,” are neither to be understood as meaning, that the eight species mentioned were the only swarming animals that were unclean and not allowed to be eaten, nor that they possessed and communicated a larger amount of uncleanness; but when taken in connection with the instructions which follow, they can only mean, that such animals would even defile domestic utensils, clothes, etc., if they fell down dead upon them. Not that they were more unclean than others, since all the unclean animals would defile not only persons, but even the clothes of those who carried their dead bodies (Lev 11:25, Lev 11:28); but there was more fear in their case than in that of others, of their falling dead upon objects in common use, and therefore domestic utensils, clothes, and so forth, could be much more easily defiled by them than by the larger quadrupeds, by water animals, or by birds. “When they be dead,” lit., “in their dying;” i.e., not only if they were already dead, but if they died at the time when they fell upon any object.
Verse 32
In either case, anything upon which one of these animals fell became unclean, “whether a vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin.” Every vessel (כּלי in the widest sense, as in Exo 22:6), “wherein any work is done,” i.e., that was an article of common use, was to be unclean till the evening, and then placed in water, that it might become clean again.
Verse 33
Every earthen vessel, into which (lit., into the midst of which) one of them fell, became unclean, together with the whole of its contents, and was to be broken, i.e., destroyed, because the uncleanness as absorbed by the vessel, and could not be entirely removed by washing (see at Lev 6:21). Of course the contents of such a vessel, supposing
