Laws of Purification by Water

1YHWH spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“This is the statute of the law which YHWH has commanded. Tell the children of Israel to bring you a red heifer without spot or defect and which was never yoked. 3Y’all are to give her to Eleazar the priest, and he will have her brought outside of the camp and killed in his presence. 4Eleazar the priest is to take some of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle her blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times. 5The heifer is to be burned in his sight. Her skin, and her meat, and her blood, with her dung, are to be burned. 6The priest is to take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer. 7Then the priest must wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water. Afterward he may come into the camp, and the priest will be unclean until the evening. 8The one who burns her must wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and will be unclean until the evening.

9“A man who is clean is to gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place. They are to be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering. 10The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer must wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening. This is a permanent statute for to the children of Israel and foreigner among them.

11“Whoever touches any human dead body will be unclean seven days. 12They must purify themselves with water on the third day, and on the seventh day they will be clean. But if they doesn’t purify themselves the third day, then on the seventh day they will not be clean. 13Whoever touches a dead person, the body of someone who has died, and doesn’t purify themselves, defiles YHWH’s tabernacle. That soul must be cut off from Israel, because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on them, they are unclean. The uncleanness is still on them.

14“This is the law when a person dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, will be unclean seven days, 15and every open vessel, which has no lid fastened on it, is unclean.

16“Whoever in the open field touches a person who was killed with a sword, or a person who died naturally, or a human bone, or a grave, will be unclean seven days.

17“For the unclean, they are to take some of the ashes from the burned sin offering, and put them in a jar with running water over them. 18A clean person is to take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, and on the one who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave. 19The clean person must sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he is to purify them. The ones being cleansed must wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water, and will be clean at evening. 20But a person who is unclean and does not purify themself, those souls must be cut off from among the assembly, because they have defiled the sanctuary of YHWH. The water for impurity has not been sprinkled on them. They is unclean. 21This is a perpetual statute for them. The one who sprinkles the water for impurity must wash their clothes, and the one who touches the water for impurity will be unclean until evening.

22“Whatever the unclean person touches will be unclean, and the soul that touches it will be unclean until evening.”