HOLY, holiness — the root sense is 'set apart, cut off from the common.' 'The place on which you stand is holy ground' (admat-qodesh, 3:5) is the first patch of EARTH in the Bible called holy — and the ground is admah, Adam's own soil (Genesis 2:7), made holy by nothing but the Presence standing on it. (The seventh day was 'made holy' first, Genesis 2:3 — holiness begins in TIME, then touches a PLACE here, and will fill the tabernacle by the book's end.) Not a quality of the dirt, but of Who is there. ⭐ Deuteronomy 26:13 (now on these pages) calls the third-year tithe simply ha-qodesh, the holy portion, with the article and nothing else — and clears it out of the house with the verb the book keeps for burning out the evil. → first discussed at Exod 3:5