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13 Anyone who touches the corpse of any dead person and does not purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. And that person must be cut off from Israel,[a] because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. He will be unclean; his uncleanness remains on him.

14 “‘This is the law: When a man dies[b] in a tent, anyone who comes into the tent and all who are in the tent will be ceremonially unclean seven days. 15 And every open container that has no covering fastened on it is unclean.

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Footnotes

  1. Numbers 19:13 sn It is in passages like this that the view that being “cut off” meant the death penalty is the hardest to support. Would the Law prescribe death for someone who touches a corpse and fails to follow the ritual? Besides, the statement in this section that his uncleanness remains with him suggests that he still lives on.
  2. Numbers 19:14 tn The word order gives the classification and then the condition: “a man, when he dies….”