Numbers 31:20

20 Likewise remove all sin from all your clothing and all that is made of skins and all work of goats’ hair and every vessel made 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 ) .

---

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 female children that have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

19 And ye must abide outside the camp seven days; and whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any dead body ye shall remove the sin from them on the third and on the seventh day, both of yourselves and of your captives.

20 Likewise remove all sin from all your clothing and all that is made of skins and all work of goats’ hair and every vessel made of wood.

21 And Eleazar, the priest, said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses;

22 certainly the gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,