Pollution

Pollution - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

POLLU'TION, n. [L. pollutio.]

1. The act of polluting.

2. Defilement; uncleanness; impurity; the state of being polluted.

3. In the Jewish economy, legal or ceremonial uncleanness, which disqualified a person for sacred services or for common intercourse with the people, or rendered any thing unfit for sacred use.

4. In medicine, the involuntary emission of semen in sleep.

5. In a religious sense, guilt,the effect of sin; idolatry, _c.

po-lu'-shun (ga'al, "to pollute"; alisgema, "contamination"): In Mal 1:7, "Ye offer polluted bread," i.e. not actually unclean, but worthless, common (compare Ezr 2:62), bread here being used metonymically for sacrificial offerings generally (compare Le 21:6; Mt 6:11). The phrase in Ac 15:20, "the pollutions of idols," is explained in 15:29 by "things sacrificed (the King James Version "meats offered") to idols."