Numbers 31:20

20 Purify all your clothing, too, and everything made of leather, goat hair, or 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 Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.

19 And all of you who have killed anyone or touched a dead body must stay outside the camp for seven days. You must purify yourselves and your captives on the third and seventh days.

20 Purify all your clothing, too, and everything made of leather, goat hair, or wood.”

21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the men who were in the battle, “The LORD has given Moses this legal requirement:

22 Anything made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, or lead—