Numbers 19:7-8

19:7 Then the priest must wash ¹  his clothes and bathe himself ²  in water, and afterward he may come ³  into the camp, but the priest will be ceremonially unclean until evening. 19:8 The one who burns it ⁴  must wash his clothes in water and bathe himself in water. He will be ceremonially unclean until evening.

Numbers 19:12-13

19:12 He must purify himself ⁵  with water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third day and the seventh day, then he will not be clean. 19:13 Anyone who touches the corpse of any dead person and does not purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. And that person must be cut off from Israel, ⁶  because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. He will be unclean; his uncleanness remains on him.

Numbers 19:19-21

19:19 And the clean person must sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he must purify him, ⁷  and then he must wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and he will be clean in the evening. 19:20 But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person must be cut off from among the community, because he has polluted the sanctuary of the Lord; the water of purification was not sprinkled on him, so he is unclean.

19:21 “‘So this will be a perpetual ordinance for them: The one who sprinkles ⁸  the water of purification must wash his clothes, and the one who touches the water of purification will be unclean until evening. ⁹ 

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¹ tn The sequence continues with the perfect tense and vav (ו) consecutive.

² tn Heb “his flesh.”

³ tn This is the imperfect of permission.

⁴ sn Here the text makes clear that he had at least one assistant.

⁵ tn The verb is the Hitpael of חָטָא (khata’), a verb that normally means “to sin.” But the Piel idea in many places is “to cleanse; to purify.” This may be explained as a privative use (“to un-sin” someone, meaning cleanse) or denominative (“make a sin offering for someone”). It is surely connected to the purification offering, and so a sense of purify is what is wanted here.

⁶ sn It is in passages like this that the view that being “cut off” meant the death penalty is the hardest to support. Would the Law prescribe death for someone who touches a corpse and fails to follow the ritual? Besides, the statement in this section that his uncleanness remains with him suggests that he still lives on.

⁷ tn The construction uses a simple Piel of חָטָא (khata’, “to purify”) with a pronominal suffix – “he shall purify him.” Some commentators take this to mean that after he sprinkles the unclean then he must purify himself. But that would not be the most natural way to read this form.

⁸ tn The form has the conjunction with it: וּמַזֵּה (umazzeh). The conjunction subordinates the following as the special law. It could literally be translated “and this shall be…that the one who sprinkles.”

⁹ sn This gives the indication of the weight of the matter, for “until the evening” is the shortest period of ritual uncleanness in the Law. The problem of contamination had to be taken seriously, but this was a relatively simple matter to deal with – if one were willing to obey the Law.