Numbers 8:15

8:15 “After this, the Levites will go in ¹  to do the work ²  of the tent of meeting. So you must cleanse them ³  and offer them like a wave offering. ⁴ 

Numbers 8:21

8:21 The Levites purified themselves ⁵  and washed their clothing; then Aaron presented them like a wave offering before the Lord, and Aaron made atonement for them to purify them.

Numbers 19:19

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, ⁶  and then he must wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and he will be clean in the evening.

[8:15]  ¹ tn The imperfect tense could also be given the nuance of the imperfect of permission: “the Levites may go in.”

[8:15]  ² tn Heb “to serve.”

[8:15]  ³ tn The two verbs in the rest of this verse are perfect tenses with vav (ו) consecutive constructions, making them equal to the imperfect. Some commentators try to get around the difficulty of repetition by making these future perfects, “and you will have cleansed,” as opposed to a summary statement, “for thus you will cleanse….”

[8:15]  ⁴ tc The Greek text adds “before the Lord.”

[8:21]  ⁵ tn The verb is the Hitpael of חָטָּא (khatta’). In this stem the meaning of the root “to sin” is likely to be connected to the noun “sin/purification” offering in a denominative sense, although some would take it as a privative usage, “to remove sin.” The idea is clear enough: They performed all the ritual in order to purify themselves ceremonially.

[19:19]  ⁹ 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.