11 Anyone touching a dead body will be unclean for seven days:
Give orders to the children of Israel to put outside the tent-circle every leper, and anyone who has any sort of flow from his body, and anyone who is unclean from the touch of the dead;
You yourselves will have to keep outside the tent-circle for seven days, anyone of you who has put any person to death or come near a dead body; and on the third day and on the seventh day make yourselves and your prisoners clean.
He may not go near any dead body or make himself unclean for his father or his mother;
And there were certain men who were unclean because of a dead body, so that they were not able to keep the Passover on that day; and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day:
And anyone touching one who has been put to death with the sword in the open country, or the body of one who has come to his end by a natural death, or a man's bone, or the resting-place of a dead body, will be unclean for seven days.
All these are unclean to you: anyone touching them when they are dead will be unclean till evening.
Then Haggai said, Will any of these be made unclean by the touch of one who is unclean through touching a dead body? And the priests answering said, It will be made unclean.
For this reason, as through one man sin came into the world, and death because of sin, and so death came to all men, because all have done evil:
And to you did he give life, when you were dead through your wrongdoing and sins,
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Numbers 19
Commentary on Numbers 19 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 19
This chapter is only concerning the preparing and using of the ashes which were to impregnate the water of purification. The people had complained of the strictness of the law, which forbade their near approach to the tabernacle, ch. 17:13. In answer to this complaint, they are here directed to purify themselves, so as that they might come as far as they had occasion without fear. Here is,
Num 19:1-10
We have here the divine appointment concerning the solemn burning of a red heifer to ashes, and the preserving of the ashes, that of them might be made, not a beautifying, but a purifying, water, for that was the utmost the law reached to; it offered not to adorn as the gospel does, but to cleanse only. This burning of the heifer, though it was not properly a sacrifice of expiation, being not performed at the altar, yet was typical of the death and sufferings of Christ, by which he intended, not only to satisfy God's justice, but to purify and pacify our consciences, that we may have peace with God and also peace in our own bosoms, to prepare for which Christ died, not only like the bulls and goats at the altar, but like the heifer without the camp.
Num 19:11-22
Directions are here given concerning the use and application of the ashes which were prepared for purification. they were laid up to be laid out; and therefore, though now one place would serve to keep them in, while all Israel lay so closely encamped, yet it is probable that afterwards, when they came to Canaan, some of these ashes were kept in every town, for there would be daily use for them. Observe,