Numbers 31:20

20 Also purify everything: garments, leather goods, things made of goat hair, and every article of wood."^[a]

Numbers 31:20 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 31:20

And purify all your raiment
By washing them; and this may intend not so much their own wearing apparel, as the raiment they took off of the dead bodies of the Midianites, since the person that touched a dead body was not obliged to wash his clothes, but the clean person that sprinkled the water of purification on him, ( Numbers 19:19 Numbers 19:21 ) , some render the words, "purify yourselves" ^F4, "together with the raiment" which seems to be the best version of them:

and all that is made of skins;
of any sort of creatures, as the covering of tents, shoes, bottles see ( Leviticus 11:32 )

and all work of goats' hair;
such as the covering of tents was also made of: and this, according to Jarchi and other Jewish writers ^F5 includes vessels made of the horns, hoofs, and bones of these creatures: and all things made of wood; as beds, cups, dishes all which might be purified by washing; see ( Leviticus 15:12 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F4 (wajxtt) "purgatote vos", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; Vid. L'Empereur, Not. ad Kimchii (odoiporia) , p. 130.
F5 Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Celim, c. 2. sect. 1.

Numbers 31:20 In-Context

18 but keep alive for yourselves all the young females who have not had sexual relations.

19 "You are to remain outside the camp for seven days. All of you and your prisoners who have killed a person or touched the dead are to purify yourselves on the third day and the seventh day.

20 Also purify everything: garments, leather goods, things made of goat hair, and every article of wood."

21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the soldiers who had gone to battle, "This is the legal statute the Lord commanded Moses:

22 Only the gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, and lead-

Footnotes

• [a]. Nm 19:11-20; Lv 11:32