Numbers 31:23

23 everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean, but it shall be purified with 1water for impurity. But whatever * cannot stand the fire you shall pass through the water.

Numbers 31:23 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 31:23

Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go
through the fire
Either through the smoke of the fire, and so be purified by suffumigation; or be put into the fire itself, where though they might be melted as the above things, yet not consumed as raiment, and vessels of skins, goats' hair, and wood, would be:

and it shall be clean;
accounted so:

nevertheless, it shall be purified with the water of separation;
with the water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer burnt, and sprinkled on it; see ( Numbers 19:9 )

and all that abideth not the fire;
without being consumed, as whatsoever is of wood

ye shall make go through the water;
dip them in it, and rinse them there with a quantity sufficient; which the Targum of Jonathan says is forty seahs of water.

Numbers 31:23 In-Context

21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had gone to battle, "This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded Moses:
22 only the gold and the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin and the lead,
23 everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean, but it shall be purified with water for impurity. But whatever cannot stand the fire you shall pass through the water.
24 "And you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean, and afterward you may enter the camp."
25 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,

Cross References 1

  • 1. Numbers 19:9, 17
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