Numbers 19:18

18 A clean person will take hyssop and dip [it] into the water and sprinkle [it] on the tent and on all the objects and persons who were there, and on one who touched the bone, or the one slain, or the dead, or the burial site.

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 Anyone {in the open field} who touches {one who has been slain}, or a corpse, or a bone of a person, or a burial site, he will be unclean for seven days.
17 For the unclean [person] they will take from the powder of the {burnt purification offering}, and they will put running water into a container.
18 A clean person will take hyssop and dip [it] into the water and sprinkle [it] on the tent and on all the objects and persons who were there, and on one who touched the bone, or the one slain, or the dead, or the burial site.
19 The clean [person] will spatter the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he will purify him, and he will wash his garments; he will bathe in the waters, and in the evening he will be clean.
20 But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person will be cut off from the midst of the assembly because he defiled the sanctuary of Yahweh; the water of impurity was not sprinkled on him; he [is] unclean.
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