Numbers 31:19-24

New English Translation

Purification After Battle

¹⁹ “Any of you who has killed anyone or touched any of the dead, remain outside the camp for seven days; purify yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day. ²⁰ You must purify each garment and everything that is made of skin, everything made of goats’ hair, and everything made of wood.”^[a]

²¹ Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had gone into the battle, “This is the ordinance of the law that the Lord commanded Moses: ²² ‘Only the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead, ²³ everything that may stand the fire, you are to pass through the fire,^[b] and it will be ceremonially clean, but it must still be purified with the water of purification. Anything that cannot withstand the fire you must pass through the water. ²⁴ You must wash your clothes on the seventh day, and you will be ceremonially clean, and afterward you may enter the camp.’”