Numbers 19:1-15 ▼

1 And YHWH spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying,

2 “This is the ordinance of the law that YHWH has commanded, saying, speak to the sons of Israel, and they shall bring to you an unblemished red heifer, in which there is no blemish, upon which a yoke never has gone up.

3 And you? shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and he shall bring it out toward the outside of the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him.

4 And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle toward opposite the face of the Tent of Meeting some of its blood seven times.

5 And the heifer shall be burned before his eyes—its hide and its flesh and its blood and its dung shall be burned.

6 And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet and cast them into the midst of the burning heifer.

7 And the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in the water, and afterward he shall come into the camp; and the priest shall be unclean until the evening.

8 And the one who burns it shall wash his clothes in the water and bathe his flesh in the water, and shall be unclean until the evening.

9 And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them outside of the camp in a clean place, and they shall be kept for the congregation of the sons of Israel for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin.

10 And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. And it shall be a statute forever for the sons of Israel and for the sojourner who is sojourning in their midst.

11 And He who touches against the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.

12 He shall cleanse himself from sin with the water on the third day, and on the seventh day he will be clean. But if he does not cleanse himself from sin on the third day, and on the seventh day, he will not be clean.

13 Anyone who touches the dead body of a man who has died, and does not cleanse himself from sin, he defiles the tabernacle of YHWH, and that person shall be cut off from Israel because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. He shall be unclean; his uncleanness is on him still.

14 This is the law of the man when he dies in a tent: All who come into the tent and all who are in the tent shall be unclean seven days.

15 And every open vessel that has no cover fastened on it is unclean.