Numbers 19:11-16

Purification from Uncleanness

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

19:14 “‘This is the law: When a man dies ⁷  in a tent, anyone who comes into the tent and all who are in the tent will be ceremonially unclean seven days. 19:15 And every open container that has no covering fastened on it is unclean. 19:16 And whoever touches the body of someone killed with a sword in the open fields, ⁸  or the body of someone who died of natural causes, ⁹  or a human bone, or a grave, will be unclean seven days. ¹⁰ 

[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.

[19:12]  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.

[19:13]  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.

[19:14]  ⁷ tn The word order gives the classification and then the condition: “a man, when he dies….”

[19:16]  ⁸ tn The expression for “in the open field” is literally “upon the face of the field” (עַל־פְּנֵי הַשָּׂדֶה, ’al pÿne hassadeh). This ruling is in contrast now to what was contacted in the tent.

[19:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “a dead body”; but in contrast to the person killed with a sword, this must refer to someone who died of natural causes.

[19:16]  ¹⁰ sn See Matt 23:27 and Acts 23:3 for application of this by the time of Jesus.