Laws for Purification
1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2
“This is the statute of the law that the Lord has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish,
1and on which a yoke has never come.
3
And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and
2it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him.
4
And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and
3sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.
5
And the heifer shall be burned in his sight.
4Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned.
6
And the priest shall take
5cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn, and throw them into the fire burning the heifer.
7
Then the priest
6shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. But the priest shall be unclean until evening.
8
7The one who burns the heifer
8shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water and shall be unclean until evening.
9
And a man who is clean shall gather up
9the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a
10clean place. And they shall be kept for the water for
11impurity for the congregation of the people of Israel; it is a sin offering.
10
And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer
12shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. And this shall be a perpetual statute for the people of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them.