Numbers 19:18

18 A person who is clean will take a sprig of hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle the tent, all the furnishings, and all the people who were in the tent [with the dead body]. He must also sprinkle any person who has touched a human bone or a grave and any person who has touched someone who has been killed or who has died naturally.

Numbers 19:18 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 19:18

And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water,
&c.] Three stalks of hyssop bound together, as the Targum of Jonathan, and this man was to be a clean priest, according to the same; but it does not seem necessary that he should be a priest, but that anyone free from ceremonial pollution might do it:

and sprinkle it upon the tent;
where there was a dead body: but this, we are told, is to be understood not of a tent made of wood, or stone, or clay, but made of anything woven, as linen: or of skins F21:

and upon all the vessels;
in such a tent, that is, open ones, as before observed:

and upon the persons that were there:
when the man died in it, or came into it since, and while the dead body was in it;

and upon him that touched a bone;
of a dead man, or, as the Targum of Jonathan, the bone of a living man that is separated from him:

or one slain, or one dead;
slain with a sword, or dead of the pestilence, as the same Targum, or of any other disease, or in any other way:

or a grave;
or the covering or side of one, as the same Targum adds.


FOOTNOTES:

F21 Maimon. in Misn. Sabbat, c. 2. sect. 3.

Numbers 19:18 In-Context

16 "Whoever is outdoors and touches someone who was killed or has died naturally or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave will be unclean for seven days.
17 "[This is what you must do] for people who become unclean from touching a dead body. Put some of the ashes from the red cow that was burned as an offering for sin into a container. Then pour fresh water on them.
18 A person who is clean will take a sprig of hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle the tent, all the furnishings, and all the people who were in the tent [with the dead body]. He must also sprinkle any person who has touched a human bone or a grave and any person who has touched someone who has been killed or who has died naturally.
19 A person who is clean will sprinkle these types of unclean people on the third day and the seventh day. On the seventh day the clean person will finish taking away their sins. Then they must wash their clothes and bodies, and in the evening they will be clean.
20 But if the person who becomes unclean doesn't have his sin taken away, that person must be excluded from the assembly. He has made the holy place of the LORD unclean. The water to take away uncleanness wasn't sprinkled on him. He is unclean.
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