Bilangan 12:14

12:14 The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had only spit ¹  in her face, would she not have been disgraced for seven days? Shut her out from the camp seven days, and afterward she can be brought back in again.”

Bilangan 19:11-12

Purification from Uncleanness

19:11 “‘Whoever touches ²  the corpse ³  of any person ⁴  will be ceremonially unclean ⁵  seven days. 19:12 He must purify himself ⁶  with water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third day and the seventh day, then he will not be clean.

[12:14]  ¹ tn The form is intensified by the infinitive absolute, but here the infinitive strengthens not simply the verbal idea but the conditional cause construction as well.

[19:11]  ² tn The form is the participle with the article functioning as a substantive: “the one who touches.”

[19:11]  ³ tn Heb “the dead.”

[19:11]  ⁴ tn The expression is full: לְכָל־נֶפֶשׁ אָדָם (lÿkhol-nefesh ’adam) – of any life of a man, i.e., of any person.

[19:11]  ⁵ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it follows only the participle used as the subject, but since the case is hypothetical and therefore future, this picks up the future time. The adjective “ceremonially” is supplied in the translation as a clarification.

[19:12]  ⁶ tn The verb is the Hitpael of חָטָא (khata’), a verb that normally means “to sin.” But the Piel idea in many places is “to cleanse; to purify.” This may be explained as a privative use (“to un-sin” someone, meaning cleanse) or denominative (“make a sin offering for someone”). It is surely connected to the purification offering, and so a sense of purify is what is wanted here.