Ashes of the Red Heifer
1 The Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2 “This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded. Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and which was never yoked. 3 You shall give her to Eleazar the priest, and she shall be brought outside of the camp and slaughtered in his presence. 4 Eleazar the priest shall take some of her blood with his finger and sprinkle her blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times.
5 And the heifer shall be burned in his sight: her skin, her meat and her blood, with her dung, he shall burn. 6 The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer. 7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the evening. 8 He who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his flesh in water and shall be unclean until the evening.
9 Someone who is ceremonially clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the Israelites for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering. 10 He who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. This shall be, to the Israelites, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them, a statute forever.
Purification of the Unclean
11 He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean for seven days. 12 He shall purify himself with water on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean, but if he does not purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 13 Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the Lord’s tabernacle, and that person shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.
14 This is the law when a man dies in a tent: Everyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shall be unclean for seven days. 15 Every open vessel which has no covering bound on it is unclean.
16 Whoever, in the open field, touches someone who is slain with a sword, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean for seven days.
17 For the unclean, they shall take of the ashes from the burnt sin offering and pour running water over them inside a vessel. 18 A clean person shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave. 19 The clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he shall purify him. He shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and shall be clean at evening.
20 But the man who shall be unclean and shall not purify himself. That person shall be cut off from among the assembly because he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. The water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him. He is unclean. 21 It shall be a perpetual statute to them. He who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening.
22 Whatever the unclean person touches shall become unclean, and the person who touches it shall be unclean until evening.”