Numbers 31:23

23 everything that can withstand fire-put through fire, and it will be clean. It must still be purified with the purification water.^[a] Anything that cannot withstand fire, put 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 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-

23 everything that can withstand fire-put through fire, and it will be clean. It must still be purified with the purification water. Anything that cannot withstand fire, put through the water.

24 On the seventh day wash your clothes, and you will be clean. After that you may enter the camp."

25 The Lord told Moses,

Footnotes

• [a]. Nm 19:1-9,17-20