Numbers 19:11

Purification from Uncleanness

19:11 “‘Whoever touches ¹  the corpse ²  of any person ³  will be ceremonially unclean ⁴  seven days.

Numbers 6:6

6:6 “‘All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he must not contact ⁵  a dead body. ⁶ 

Numbers 15:27

15:27 “‘If any person ⁷  sins unintentionally, then he must bring a yearling female goat for a purification offering.

Numbers 30:13

30:13 “Any vow or sworn obligation that would bring affliction to her, ⁸  her husband can confirm or nullify. ⁹ 

Numbers 31:40

31:40 The people were 16,000, of which the Lord’s tribute was 32 people. ¹⁰ 

Numbers 21:4

Fiery Serpents

21:4 Then they traveled from Mount Hor by the road to the Red Sea, ¹¹  to go around the land of Edom, but the people ¹²  became impatient along the way.

Numbers 31:35

31:35 and 32,000 young women who had never had sexual intercourse with a man. ¹³ 

Numbers 35:11

35:11 you must then designate some towns as towns of refuge for you, to which a person who has killed someone unintentionally may flee.

Numbers 35:15

35:15 These six towns will be places of refuge for the Israelites, and for the foreigner, and for the settler among them, so that anyone who kills any person accidentally may flee there.

Numbers 35:30

35:30 “Whoever kills any person, the murderer must be put to death by the testimony ¹⁴  of witnesses; but one witness cannot ¹⁵  testify against any person to cause him to be put to death.

Numbers 31:19

Purification After Battle

31:19 “Any of you who has killed anyone or touched any of the dead, remain outside the camp for seven days; purify yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

Numbers 31:28

31:28 “You must exact ¹⁶  a tribute for the Lord from the fighting men who went out to battle: one life out of five hundred, from the people, the cattle, and from the donkeys and the sheep.

[19:11]  ¹ tn The form is the participle with the article functioning as a substantive: “the one who touches.”

[19:11]  ² tn Heb “the dead.”

[19:11]  ³ tn The expression is full: לְכָל־נֶפֶשׁ אָדָם (lÿkhol-nefesh ’adam) – of any life of a man, i.e., of any person.

[19:11]  ⁴ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it follows only the participle used as the subject, but since the case is hypothetical and therefore future, this picks up the future time. The adjective “ceremonially” is supplied in the translation as a clarification.

[6:6]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew verb is simply “enter, go,” no doubt with the sense of go near.

[6:6]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew has נֶפֶשׁ מֵת (nefesh met), literally a “dead person.” But since the word נֶפֶשׁ can also be used for animals, the restriction would be for any kind of corpse. Death was very much a part of the fallen world, and so for one so committed to the Lord, avoiding all such contamination would be a witness to the greatest separation, even in a family.

[15:27]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew text hasוְאִם־נֶפֶשׁ אַחַת (vÿ’im-nefesh ’akhat), sometime translated “and if any soul.” But the word describes the whole person, the soul in the body; it refers here to the individual who sins.

[30:13]  ¹³ tn The sentence uses the infinitive construct לְעַנֹּת (lÿ’annot, “to afflict”), which is the same word used in the instructions for the day of atonement in which people are to afflict themselves (their souls). The case here may be that the woman would take a religious vow on such an occasion to humble herself, to mortify her flesh, to abstain from certain things, perhaps even sexual relations within marriage.

[30:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “or her husband can nullify.”

[31:40]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “soul.”

[21:4]  ²¹ tn The “Red Sea” is the general designation for the bodies of water on either side of the Sinai peninsula, even though they are technically gulfs from the Red Sea.

[21:4]  ²² tn Heb “the soul of the people,” expressing the innermost being of the people as they became frustrated.

[31:35]  ²⁵ sn Here again we encounter one of the difficulties of the book, the use of the large numbers. Only twelve thousand soldiers fought the Midianites, but they brought back this amount of plunder, including 32,000 girls. Until a solution for numbers in the book can be found, or the current translation confirmed, one must remain cautious in interpretation.

[35:30]  ²⁹ tn Heb “ at the mouth of”; the metonymy stresses it is at their report.

[35:30]  ³⁰ tn The verb should be given the nuance of imperfect of potentiality.

[31:28]  ³³ tn The verb is the Hiphil, “you shall cause to be taken up.” The perfect with vav (ו) continues the sequence of the instructions. This raised offering was to be a tax of one-fifth of one percent for the Lord.