1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron saying, 2"This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, 'Speak to the children of Israel that they bring you a red heifer, a perfect one, in which there is no blemish, on which no yoke ever came. 3And you shall give her to Eleazar the priest that he may bring her forth outside the camp. And it shall be slain in his presence. 4And Eleazar the priest shall take some of her blood with his finger and sprinkle some of her blood directly toward the tabernacle of the congregation seven times. 5And the heifer shall be burned in his presence, her skin and her flesh and her blood with her dung, shall be burned. 6And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet, and throw it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. 7Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water. And afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until sunset. 8And he who burned her shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until sunset. 9And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of cleansing. It is a cleansing for sin. 10And he who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until sunset. And it shall be to the children of Israel, and to the stranger that lives among them, for a statute forever.

11He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. 12He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean. But if he does not purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 13Whoever touches the dead body of any man that has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the LORD. And that soul shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still upon him.

14This is the law when a man dies in a tent. All that come into the tent, and all in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. 15And every open vessel which has no covering bound upon it, it is unclean. 16And whoever touches one that is killed with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be mixed with it in a vessel. 18And a clean person shall take hyssop and dip in the water, and sprinkle upon the tent and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one killed, or one dead, or a grave. 19And the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day. And on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water. And he shall be clean at sunset.

20But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD. The water of separation has not been sprinkled upon him. He is unclean. 21And it shall be a perpetual statute to them that he who sprinkles the water of separation shall wash his clothes. And he that touches the water of separation shall be unclean until sunset. 22And whatever else the unclean person touches shall be unclean. And the one who touches shall be unclean until sunset. ' "