- And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying,
Num 19:2 This is the constitution of the law, as the Lord has commanded, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel, and let them take for thee a red heifer without spot, which has no spot on her, and on which no yoke has been put.
Num 19:3 And thou shalt give her to Eleazar the priest; and they shall bring her out of the camp into a clean place, and shall kill her before his face.
Num 19:4 And Eleazar shall take of her blood, and sprinkle of her blood seven times in front of the tabernacle of witness.
Num 19:5 And they shall burn her to ashes before him; and her skin and her flesh and her blood, with her dung, shall be consumed.
Num 19:6 And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet wool, and they shall cast them into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
Num 19:7 And the priest shall wash his garments, and bathe his body in water, and afterwards he shall go into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean till evening.
Num 19:8 And he that burns her shall wash his garments, and bathe his body, and shall be unclean till evening.
Num 19:9 And a clean man shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up in a clean place outside the camp; and they shall be for the congregation of the children of Israel to keep: it is the water of sprinkling, a purification.
Num 19:10 And he that gathers up the ashes of the heifer shall wash his garments, and shall be unclean until evening; and it shall be a perpetual statute for the children of Israel and for the strangers joined to them.
Num 19:11 He that touches the dead body of any man, shall be unclean seven days.
Num 19:12 He shall he purified on the third day and the seventh day, and shall be clean; but if he be not purged on the third day and the seventh day, he shall not be clean.
Num 19:13 Every one that touches the carcase of the person of a man, if he should have died, and the other not have been purified, has defiled the tabernacle of the Lord: that soul shall be cut off from Israel, because the water of sprinkling has not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.
Num 19:14 And this is the law; if a man die in a house, every one that goes into the house, and all things in the house, shall be unclean seven days.
Num 19:15 And every open vessel which has not a covering bound upon it, shall be unclean.
Num 19:16 And every one who shall touch a man slain by violence, or a corpse, or human bone, or sepulchre, shall be unclean seven days.
Num 19:17 And they shall take for the unclean of the burnt ashes of purification, and they shall pour upon them running water into a vessel.
Num 19:18 And a clean man shall take hyssop, and dip it into the water, and sprinkle it upon the house, and the furniture, and all the souls that are therein, and upon him that touched the human bone, or the slain man, or the corpse, or the tomb.
Num 19:19 and the clean man shall sprinkle the water on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day, and on the seventh day he shall purify himself; and the other shall wash his garments, and bathe himself in water, and shall be unclean until evening.
Num 19:20 And whatever man shall be defiled and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from the midst of the congregation, because he has defiled the holy things of the Lord, because the water of sprinkling has not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.
Num 19:21 And it shall be to you a perpetual statute; and he that sprinkles the water of sprinkling shall wash his garments; and he that touches the water of sprinkling shall be unclean until evening.
Num 19:22 And whatsoever the unclean man shall touch shall be unclean, and the soul that touches it shall be unclean till evening.
[English translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee
Brenton (1807-1862) originally published by Samuel Bagster & Sons,
Ltd., London, 1851]