TO SEPARATE, divide, distinguish — root badal, one of the structural verbs of creation itself: God makes largely by separating (light from darkness, waters above from waters below, day from night, Genesis 1:4, already on this shelf, and repeated at vv 6, 7, 14, 18). ⚠ The identical verb resurfaces, generations later, as the priesthood's own job description: Aaron is charged 'to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean' (Leviticus 10:10, already on these pages) — the same root that first ordered light from dark now ordering a nation's whole ritual life. Creation's first verb becomes the priesthood's daily one. ⚠ One chapter further on it is named as the stated PURPOSE of an entire law: Leviticus 11:47 (already on these pages) closes the whole clean-and-unclean code with this infinitive and nothing else — 'to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.' The same act runs from the first day of the world to a rule about which pot to smash. → first discussed at Gen 1:4