Numbers 31:20

20 You will purify yourselves and every garment and every object of hide and all the work of goats' hair, and every object of wood."

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 all the females who have not {had sexual intercourse with a man}, keep alive for yourselves.

19 And you, camp outside the camp seven days; all who killed a person and all who touched the slain purify yourselves on the third day and on the seventh day, you and your captives.

20 You will purify yourselves and every garment and every object of hide and all the work of goats' hair, and every object of wood."

21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of the battle who came from the war, "This [is] the decree of the law that Yahweh commanded Moses.

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